Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite movement

by Esther Wood

The nail-mark in the palm is an obvious presage of the coming Cross. The rough planks and the half-woven basket convey the idea of unfinished work; and on a ladder overhead broods the ever-present dove. The picture is inscribed from the verse in Zechariah,—“And one shall say unto him, ‘What are these wounds in thine hands?’ Then shall he answer, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’”

To recover the actual conditions of the early life of Christ—to reproduce the aspect of a Nazarene cottage eighteen centuries ago—and yet to charge the historic figure with a vitality and emotion that brings it home with irresistible significance to the heart of the spectator of to-day, is perhaps a higher triumph of art than could be achieved by Millais’s neo-realistic method. Rare as is success in this dual effort—the union of archæological accuracy with profound insight into the eternal meanings of the ancient tragedy—it has been attained beyond question by Holman Hunt in his greatest picture, “The Shadow of Death.” Sojourning for four years at Nazareth and Bethlehem (the latter on account of the alleged resemblance of its people to the ancient House of David), the painter equipped himself with knowledge of every detail of domestic life, furniture, custom, and dress that could heighten the literal truthfulness of his work. To that scientific fidelity he added the elaborate symbolism of which he made a studious art, and through that symbolism he poured a wealth of imagination, a dignity of thought and an intensity of feeling which steeped the subject in a moral glow hitherto unknown to English painting. The scene is laid at sunset in the carpenter’s shop. The Christ, whose face and form, now grown to manhood, speak utter weariness of body and soul, seems to stand there for all humanity, confronting the whole problem of labour and suffering and death. There is something more than physical exhaustion, though that is paramount, in the drooping figure of the tired workman as He lifts His arms from the tools and stretches them out in the evening sunlight, all unconscious that as He does so, the slant rays cast His shadow, in the semblance of a crucifix, upon the cottage wall behind, where a wooden tool-rack forms as it were the arms of the cross on which the shadow of His arms is cast; and near it a little window, open to the east, makes an aureole of light around His head. His mother, kneeling on the floor, examining the casket in which she keeps the long-treasured gifts of the Magi—gold, and frankincense, and myrrh, glances up and sees the terrible image on the wall. It is the cross of a daily crucifixion, rather than of the final death, that weighs upon the soul of Christ;—the crucifixion of unhonoured labour in obscurity; the hard, despised routine of toil endured by the uncomplaining workers of all time. He knows both the dignity of labour and its shame;—the dignity, that is, of all honest, healthy, and profitable toil; the shame of that industrial slavery which in any land can make a man too weary to enjoy the sunset glories or to revel in the calm delights of eventide.

In turning to Hunt’s earlier picture, “The Scapegoat,” we pass from the problem of the slavery of labour to the deeper question of vicarious sacrifice. The solitary figure of the dumb and helpless animal, dying in the utter desolation of the wilderness, the unconscious and involuntary victim of human sin, speaks more eloquently than any words of the reality and pathos of the suffering of innocence for guilt. Seldom if ever has the problem been so directly urged upon us in pictorial art,—Can the law of vicarious sacrifice be reconciled with our highest ideals of moral justice? Can a beneficent and omnipotent God permit one innocent being, without choice or knowledge, to pay another’s penalty? Or, on the other hand, can we formulate any other method by which humanity could be taught its own solemn power, and its absolute community and interdependence of soul with soul? The painter’s business is to state that problem, not to solve it; and this Hunt does with the utmost simplicity, sincerity, and earnestness. Pitching his tent in the most inhospitable region on the shores of the Dead Sea, the artist painted the actual landscape upon which the ancient victim was cast adrift, to perish slowly in the desert without the camp; and from that strange, wild studio his picture came full-charged with the loneliness and terror of the scene, and the momentous meaning of the scapegoat’s sacrifice.

“The Light of the World,” frequently regarded as Holman Hunt’s greatest work, though more mystical and appealing less directly to common sentiment than “The Shadow of Death,” is purely symbolic in design and character; and indeed may be taken to represent the high-water mark of abstract symbolism, as distinct from Biblical history, in the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The circumstances of its execution, partly at Oxford, and partly in his studio at Chelsea by moonlight, have already been referred to. The picture tells no story; deals with no incident or condition of the human life of Christ, but presents the ideal figure in the threefold aspect of prophet, priest, and king. The Saviour appears in the guise of a pilgrim, carrying a lantern, and knocking in the night at a fast-closed door. He wears the white robe of inspiration, typical of prophecy; the jewelled robe and breastplate of a priest; and a crown of gold interwoven with one of thorns. The legend from Revelation, iii. 20, gives the keynote of the work: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” The fast-barred door, with its rusty nails and bolts overgrown with ivy, and its threshold blocked up with brambles and weeds, is the door of the human soul. The light from the lantern in Christ’s hand is the light of conscience (according to Mr. Ruskin’s well-known description of the picture), and the light which suffuses the head of the Saviour, issuing from the crown of thorns, is the hope of salvation. The lamp-light rests on the doorway and the weeds, and on a fallen apple which gives the suggestion of hereditary sin. The thorns in the crown are now bearing fresh leaves, “for the healing of the nations.”

It has been charged against many Pre-Raphaelite paintings that their elaborate symbolism, and the highly subjective development of the designs, require not merely titles and texts, but footnotes also, for their explanation. In the pictures of Holman Hunt especially, this charge may have some weight; but it may be fairly met by the consideration of the close and deep thought, the prolonged spiritual fervour—unexampled since the Italian Pre-Raphaelites—in which each masterpiece is steeped, and which surely brings a claim upon such intelligent study as would enable all but those wholly ignorant of Christian symbology to interpret the details for themselves. Rossetti said of one of Hunt’s pictures that “the solemn human soul seems to vibrate through it like a bell in a forest.” That sound, once caught, yields the keynote to the pictorial scheme, and attunes all the latent music to its perfect end.

Rossetti, however, in no case employed the symbolic-figure method, so triumphantly used in “The Light of the World,” for his Biblical subjects; but reserved it for the realm of romantic allegory and classic myth. His illustration of the eternal truths of penitence and aspiration, of “the awakening conscience” and the resurrection of the soul, is given us in his beautiful drawing of “Mary Magdalene at the door of Simon the Pharisee.” The scene is laid amid the revelry of a village street at a time of festival. Mary, passing with a throng of gay companions, sees, through the window of a house, the face of Christ; and with a sudden impulse leaves the procession and tears the flowers passionately from her hair, seeking to enter where He sits; the while her lover, following, strives to dissuade her, and to lead her back to the mirthful company. The appeal of passion and the answer of the repentant woman, beautiful in her mingled shame and triumph, are best recounted in Rossetti’s own words, from the most successful of his sonnets on his own designs:

“Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?

Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek.

Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek;

See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.