He was painting in oils with water-colour brushes, as thinly as in water-colour, on canvas which he had primed with white till the surface was as smooth as cardboard, and every tint remained transparent” (
On the original frame Rossetti had inscribed his sonnet explaining the symbolism [Sonnet I], while a second sonnet [i.e., Sonnet II] . . . was printed in the catalogue of the Free Exhibition. Both sonnets are inscribed at the bottom of the present frame”(
The two sonnets were printed on a slip of gold-covered paper and fixed to the frame of the picture. (They are now on the back.)” (
what had been a frame with curved top corners to a rectangular design of the type he had evolved with Madox Brown earlier that decade. The picture was therefore originally more archaic in appearance” (
PreRaphaelite” work by carrying the initials of the movement as part of its signature.
It belongs to the religious class which has always appeared to me the most adapted and the most worthy to interest the members of a Christian community. The subject is the education of the Blessed Virgin, one which has been treated at various times by Murillo and other painters,—but, as I cannot but think, in a very inadequate manner, since they have invariably represented her as reading from a book under the superintendence of her Mother, St. Anne, an occupation obviously incompatible with these times, and which could only pass muster if treated in a purely symbolical manner. In order, therefore, to attempt something more probable and at the same time less commonplace, I have represented the future Mother of Our Lord as occupied in embroidering a lily,—always under the direction of St. Anne; the flower she is copying being held by two little angels. At a large window (or rather aperture) in the background, her father, St. Joachim, is seen pruning a vine. There are various symbolic accessories which it is needless to describe” (
the dress of the Virgin and the angel's face” before sending the picture to the Dowager Marchioness of Bath, who had purchased it (
altered the angel's wings from white to deep pink and the Virgin's sleeves from yellow to brown” (
PRB” (for “
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”). The initials announced (in coded form) the arrival of a new movement in British art.
Like his PRB brothers Hunt and Millais, DGR had intended to submit the picture to the Royal Academy's spring Exhibition in early April, but at the last minute he changed his mind and showed it at the (juryless) Free Exhibition, which opened in March before the Royal Academy show. Hunt was put out by the event and suspected DGR of wanting to steal a march on their work. But the truth is probably otherwise. DGR was quite nervous about the reception of his picture and may well have feared that the Academy wouldn't have accepted his painting. Besides, Madox Brown was showing his new work (
Attached to the picture was a gold-faced sheet of paper containing two
sonnets on the painting. (This gold sheet is no longer with the painting.) The first sonnet is a verbal translation of the
iconographical details; the second is a literalization of its Catholic
symbology. Painting and sonnets together define the special kind of
composite art that DGR practised—an art epitomized in those works
that comprise a “double work of art
”, a
work with both poetical and pictorial components. Typically with such works
DGR would execute a painting and then write one or more poems to comment on
the painting, or interpret it.
Although it shares many characteristics of the highly detailed, even
naturalistic style of Hunt and Millais, the picture is anything but an
exercise in Pre-Raphaelite “realism
”.
It is far too literal in its handling of its subject and its accessories, as
the constellation of the young angel, the watered lily, and the books most
dramatically show. It is also far less meticulous in its rendering of small
details than either Hunt or Millais were in their work. The spirit driving
this picture is the spirit of pastiche, which here becomes a vehicle for the
presence of what DGR liked to call
“Mystery
.” As Madox Brown saw, the
painting is a kind of magical exercise designed to call back the spirit that
informed the pictorial work of primitive Christian art: as if a devoted act
of careful imitation might be able to recover the spirit of a lost world.
The presence of the books is especially revealing, for while they might be
thought anachronistic in relation to the legendary subject, they are
precisely historical as figural forms drawn out of a medieval stylistic
imagination. This is a romantic and even a faustian painting; its desire is
directed toward the realization of an ecstatic ethos, an impersonal
absorption in the spiritual forces that stand within the subject of the
painting. The painting is the work of an artist who wants to be caught up,
in exactly the way that the young Mary is being caught up, by mysterious and
impersonal divine agencies. To DGR, however, if such agencies operate in the
world, they are most fully realized in an artistic expression devoted to
their revelation.
Begun in the summer of 1848, DGR worked hard at the picture right up to its
exhibition the following March. He began it while living with Holman Hunt at
their Cleveland Street lodgings, and both Hunt and Madox Brown supervised
much of the work. He “made several studies in chalk for
the picture, besides the design for the composition
” (
Surtees says that DGR planned to make the picture the central panel of a
triptych, with the side panels “depicting the Virgin
planting a lily and a rose, and the
” (
The painting was well received, for the most part, as were the other new PRB
paintings exhibited by Hunt (
John Orchard wrote a pair of bad sonnets on DGR's picture that both CR and
WMR comment upon (see
The picture treats a subject drawn from the legendary history of the life of
the Madonna. In good (early) Pre-Raphaelite style, DGR handles the work by
treating the entire apparatus in a realistic, or historicist, manner. That
is to say, the painting attempts to give a faithful (historical)
representation at two levels simultaneously: at the level of the original
narrative materials, from the primitive history of Christianity, and at the
level of the symbology, which DGR defines in medieval terms. For all its
elaborate set of symbolic details, therefore, the picture is anything but
symbolical. Indeed, its entire approach is literalist—a fact
emphasized by the original frame of the picture, which was designed to give
it an antique, “medieval
” appearance.
DGR's two sonnets for the painting explain most of the work's Christian
symbology. The sonnets do not, however, point out that the trellis on which
St. Joachim is working puts a cross at a central position in the picture, or
that the vine alludes to the True Vine (i.e., Jesus), or that the red cloth
draped at the center signals the robe of Christ's Passion. Indeed, Mary is
represented as embroidering a garment that alludes to the same robe. The
rose and the lily are both the Madonna's flowers, and the lamp signifies
piety. The painting's colors are carefully chosen, as one sees most
particularly in the case of the stack of books, which are color-coded to the
virtues they represent. Surtees points out that the trellis-cross is twined
with ivy “which the artist here uses for the first time as
a symbol of ‘
” (clinging
memory
’the seven sorrowful
mysteries
” (
Linguistic forms populate the canvas (and the integral frame). DGR often
incorporated such verbal elements in his pictures—a device he
borrowed from medieval styles—in order to increase the conceptual
and abstract character of his work. Here the names of the virtues appear on
the book spines (Fortitudo, Temperentia, Prudentia, Spes, Fides, and
Caritas); the gilt haloes are inscribed S. Ioachimus, S. Anna, S. Maria
S.V.); a scroll binding the palms and briars bears the legend “
”; and the portable organ near the hassock is carved with
the initial M and has the inscription “
”.
The painting inaugurated a whole series of related pictorial treatments of
the Madonna over the next few years, in various media.
Treatments of the Madonna, whether in a legendary or a symbolical mode, are of course numerous, but DGR was particularly interested in medieval representations. He mentions Murillo but he might as well have cited any number of others. Faxon notes the possible influence of a woodcut
But the most important influences on this work and related early pieces were
Ford Madox Brown and Holman Hunt, both of whom tutored DGR in painting
technique. The influence of the Nazarenes, in particular of Overbeck, is
secondary, via Brown's interest in their work. Hunt's insistence on the need
to paint from “Nature
”, which became a
key point of the Pre-Raphaelite program, has clearly affected DGR's work
here. Hunt's point embraced not only using “real”
persons and objects as models for pictorial images, but also working with
materials and techniques that would be “truthful” to
the ideal of Nature. This meant using pure colors and being careful of
technical accuracy, particularly in the treatment of details and in the drawing.
But even here DGR's distinctive way of proceeding with a picture is apparent, and very different from Millais or Hunt. Brown was right when he compared this work to early Christian art, for the simplicity of the picture is not at all naturalistic, as is the work of Millais and especially Hunt; it is decidedly hieratic and abstract.
The contemporary work that the picture most recalls is Brown's
Besides the two sonnets directly connected to the painting, the picture
forms part of a whole series of related pictorial and poetical works that
DGR had been making since 1847, and that he continued to be preoccupied with
through the 1850s. These include his projected series of
DGR may well have used Mrs. Anna Jameson's popular
DGR con 107 illustrazioni