“simple, rather severe mouldings on either side of very broad, shallow bevelled boards. Large roundels are set into the boards . . . usually placed singly at the mid-point of each side of the painting.”In this particular case the roundels and frame inscriptions are closely integrated to the painting. The roundels
“were possibly inspired by the margin decorations in Plate 14 of Blake's(— <hi rend="i">Job</hi> The Days of Creation. The texts had been used before by Rossetti as early as 1856 on the original frame of the water-color. At the bottom is inscribed the line from <hi rend="i">Dante's Dream</hi> I, i, quoted by Dante in the <hi rend="i">Jeremiah, Lamentations</hi> on the death of Beatrice <hi rend="i">Vita Nuova</hi> ; at the top is the date of Beatrice's death, now partly erased,Quomodo sedet sola Civitas! Jun: Die 9: Anno 1290”
“They symbolize, in a much more naturalistic way, the same forces that were symbolized by the schematic roundels on the frame of the 1854(and again probably relate to the closing lines of the <hi rend="i">Salutation of Beatrice</hi> ( <hi rend="i">Commedia</hi> XXXIII. 143-145)” <hi rend="i">Paradiso</hi>
This is the original painting, now in the Tate Gallery—an
outstanding example of DGR's symbolist work. The picture is executed like
DGR's watercolors of the 1850s rather than the oils of the 1860s, as one
sees in the chalky painting surface, the undefined contours, and what
Gabriele Reithmiller calls “the subdued luminosity of the
colors separated from each other in compact compartments . . . to
emphasize contrasting color fields”
rather than to
support a realistic representation.
In terms of composition the picture illustrates a typical planarity of
approach. Foreground and background are organized not by perspective but by
emblematic relations. Indeed, DGR deliberately sought for an organization
after the manner of what he called “the old Italian
painters”
(in his letter to Ellen Heaton of 19 May 1863,
when he took up his work on the picture after he had set it aside). DGR's
symbolist technique, so unlike the“old Italian
painters,”
should not obscure his compositional models in
primitive art.
A non-realist approach governs the deployment of light in the picture. The
placement of Beatrice's head turns what is formally a realistic moment
(sunlight from the distant city) into something far more emblematic.
Beatrice's head is virtually in an aureole, as is the figure of Love at the
left (and as Dante's, at the right, is not). The influence of stained glass
lighting is very clear in a painting like this, although Ruskin judged it to
be characteristic of all his work up to the mid-60s: “Its
light is not the light of sunshine itself, but of sunshine diffused
through coloured glass”
(
“sombre harmony of gold and green and purple,”as Waugh noted (
There are many replicas of various kinds, each representing a very different approach to the subject. A comparative study of the different versions of this work reveals a great deal about DGR's way of proceeding with replicas. The common view is that because he wanted the money he could get for these projects, and because he often complained about the work, that therefore the replicas are relatively unimportant. But the series of
Various letters from DGR show that he had begun studies and even a painting
of his wife Elizabeth as Dante's Beatrice sometime before her suicide-death
in early 1862 (see “lately found”
the unfinished
painting and that he now wanted to finish it. At that point DGR imagined
that “The background of the picture should be a landscape
one, introducing after the manner of the old Italian painters, scenes
from Dante, bearing on its main subject”
(quoted in
The picture was a celebrated work from the beginning, and DGR did a number
of replicas and drawings, the most important being the
The picture was recognized as a masterpiece from the beginning, as all the early notices show. The numerous replicas and related drawings testify to its fame as well.
The iconography is centrally Rossettian. The subject, imagined out of Dante, represents Beatrice in a tranced state, caught in a kind of fore-dream of her heavenly translation.
Various commentators point out that the poppy borne by the mystical bird (an
Annunciation figure as well as a sign of the Holy Spirit) emblemizes death,
and perhaps chastity and peace as well. The red coloring of the dove is
dramatically nonnaturalistic; iconographically it signifies love and
passion. Stephens, presumably with the concurrence of the artist, says that
Beatrice is sitting “in a balcony of her father's palace
in Florence. The picture places us in the chamber from which the balcony
opens, and the damsel's form is half lost against the outer light, half
merged with the inner shadows of the place. She is herself a vision
while . . . the heavenly visions of the New Life are revealed to the
eyes of her spirit. The open window gives a view of the Arno, its
bridge, and the towers and palaces of that city in which Dante and
Beatrix spent their lives till the fatal month of June 1290, when she
died, and, as the poet tells us,
(‘the whole city came
to be, as it were, widowed and despoiled of all
dignity . . .’
In the background the poet Dante
attentively regards the figure of Love, the ideal Eros of his vision,
who, holding a flaming heart, passes on the other side of the picture
heavenwards, and seems to sign to him that he should follow in that
path”
Arbor Vitae
is faintly visible behind the figure of Love at the left background.
It is worth noting that all the background details of this picture,
including the cityscape, are much more schematically presented than they are
in other, later versions of the subject, particularly the
The painting's traditional association with
The tranced pose of Beatrice distinctly recalls the pose DGR had Elizabeth
Siddal take when she sat for his early picture
The picture should also be connected with DGR's drawing and watercolor
of
The picture has often been linked to
The Dantescan connection, to the“
lines
24-28), which is translated by DGR as “The eyes that weep
for pity of the heart”
(see
DGR always regarded
As so often with DGR's mythic imaginations, however, he also saw his other
great love, Jane Morris, in the figure of Beatrice, as we know most directly
from the exquisite watercolor he did of her in 1872,
DGR con 107 illustrazioni