This unfinished work is extremely striking because of the uniform treatment of the gold background and the gold drapery of the damozel. The modelled head and hair appear to float not so much on as in this flat and shallow gold surface. The effect is visually contradictory, as if DGR had introduced a realistic and even voluptuous image into the kind of space typical of iconic and even byzantine work.
The picture was begun as an early version of
to a small single head picture”, as he told his studio assistant Treffry Dunn, after he had begun the larger picture again (quoted in
The picture not only forms part of the sequence of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Pictures and Poems
Masterpieces of DGR
DGR: An Illustrated Memorial
The Portfolio
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
A Catalogue Raisonné
A Catalogue Raisonné
Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts