The sibyl is presented holding a palm-sceptre and seated upon a throne before a marble canopied niche. A festoon of olive boughs hangs over her head. Butterflies, symbols of the soul, hover at one side; lamps at either hand illuminate the carved pilasters above, that at the left representing a blindfolded cupid, beneath a circlet of roses, and that at the right a skull, beneath a wreath of poppies; carved in the niche appears a winged sphinx and, at the left, perhaps a many-headed serpent.” (
The painting is more grotesque than it perhaps ought to be, given its elaborate classical accessories. But those classical materials, ornately and loosely articulated, do not lend a sense of dignity to the picture as they might be expected to do. To the contrary, they develop on one hand a bizarre and ambiguous spatial structure, and on the other an almost crepuscular atmosphere from the strange juxtapositions of artificial and natural forms.
Looking at the background setting, Swinburne and Bennett give very different
reports, and this difference tells much about the peculiar spatial dynamics
of Sybilla Palmifera. Swinburne, for example, offers the
following account of the painting in his review of the 1868 Royal Academy
Exhibition: “Behind this figure of the ideal and
inaccessible beauty, an inlaid wall of alternate alabaster and black
marble bears inwrought on its upper part the rival twin emblems of love
and death
” (The sibyl is . . . seated upon a throne before a
marble canopied niche . . . ; lamps at either hand illuminate the carved
pilasters above, that at the left representing a blindfolded cupid . . .
and that at the right a skull
” (canopied
niche,
” creates a radically ambiguous sense of space.
Indeed, as in a picture by Escher, this niche can appear alternately concave
and convex.
The grotesque space of the picture marries with the strange color
arrangements. Swinburne acutely noted that “The cadence of
colour is splendid and simple, a double trinity of green and red, the
dim red robe, the deep red poppies, the soft red roses; and again the
green veil wound about with wild flowers, the green down of
poppy-leaves, the sharper green of rose-leaves
”
(cadence
” of golds associates
“Lady Beauty
” with various
ornamental accessories. In doing so, it recalls an analogous set of
associations among the greens and reds: in all three color cases, something
vital is set in relation to something artificial.
In the end, then, the “splendid and
simple
” color structure of the work turns as grotesque as
its spatial structure. The ambiguity of vital and ornamental forms,
emblemized in the figures of love and death, is perhaps most dramatically
articulated in the two upper corners, where coronals of flowers surmount the
wall/pilasters that bear those allegorical figures. In each case a bizarre
congruence of colors and forms replicates an equally bizarre spatial event:
the flowers appear to be simply laid flat to the wall/pilasters, suspended
vertically in a plane of ambiguous location (in one perspective they lie at
the extreme foreground, in another at the extreme background).
DGR's paintings regularly construct themselves out of these kinds of pictorial ambiguities. In this case, however, the execution seems loose and undeliberated, and leaves the viewer with the sense that the composition of space has not been effectively or carefully integrated to the other elements of the picture, in particular the carefully articulated color composition.
DGR began work on the painting before he had a buyer, but soon after (late
in 1865) he persuaded George Rae to take it up on commission (the final
price agreed on was 400 guineas). It was to be titled “Palmifera”, he told Rae, because it was “really to bear away the palm from all my doings hitherto” (see letters to Rae, 7 December 1865 and 16 January 1866
DGR worked on and off at the painting for the next four years, continually putting off and excusing himself to Rae for his failure to complete the work. In June 1869 DGR even accepted 200 pounds on acount from Leyland for a replica (which in fact he never completed and probably never even began), completing it finally in December 1870, much to Rae's delight (the perspective of the Sibyl's
background which I find is in a muddle for want of attention in the
first instance
” (
Swinburne's enthusiastic notice of 1868 set a highly laudatory tone that the
picture does not perhaps deserve. See Swinburne,
The picture is allegorically conceived throughout. Bennett's description is
useful: “The sibyl is presented holding a palm-sceptre and
seated upon a throne before a marble canopied niche. A festoon of olive
boughs hangs over her head. Butterflies, symbols of the soul, hover at
one side; lamps at either hand illuminate the carved pilasters above,
that at the left representing a blindfolded cupid, beneath a circlet of
roses, and that at the right a skull, beneath a wreath of poppies;
carved in the niche appears a winged sphinx and, at the left, perhaps a
many-headed serpent.
” (
The center of the allegory is the woman whom DGR named
“beauty the Palm-giver, i.e., the Principle of Beauty,
which draws all high-toned men to itself, whether with the aim of
embodying it in art or only of attaining its enjoyment in
life
” (I am just commencing
a picture . . . to be called
”
(quoted in Bennett, Palmifera which is really
to bear away the palm from all my doings hitherto.
As Swinburne and others have noted, the whole picture is conceived in the Venetian manner, and makes particular homage to Titian's use of color.
The painting forms a “double work” with the sonnet
DGR con 107 illustrazioni