Literature is filled with fictional portraits. Visual art and the written word can intertwine in glorious ways. Dorian Gray’s mysteriously aging painting springs to mind and both the image of Lady Audley in Lady Audley’s Secret and descriptions of art in The Woman in White are excellent examples of Pre-Raphaelite principles used within a novel. … Read more
In the early years of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, artist Walter Deverell discovered Elizabeth Siddal working in a millinery shop. After modeling for his painting Twelfth Night, Siddal posed for several Pre-Raphaelite painters, including William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. It was the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti who was most captivated by her. He drew … Read more
Tim Powers doesn’t write about your run-of-the-mill vampires. His undead may feed upon you, but in return they will inspire words and poetry that you could never have written before. I found Powers’ mythology to be a refreshing twist. In Hide Me Among the Graves, the artistic Rossetti family deals with the vampiric curse of … Read more