Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite movement

by Esther Wood

“Head of Christ.”

Finished study for “Mary Magdalene.”

By permission of Mr. Moncure D. Conway.

The face of the Magdalene has been said to present Rossetti’s ideal of spiritual beauty, in contrast with the physical beauty of “Lilith” and the intellectual beauty of “Sibylla Palmifera;” but as Rossetti himself afterwards applied the title of “Soul’s Beauty” to “Sibylla Palmifera,” the distinction can hardly be pursued very far. The head of Christ (for which Mr. Burne-Jones is said to have sat as a model) is of a more peculiar interest and value; being the only serious attempt at the portrayal of the central figure in Christian art which remains to us from Rossetti’s hand. Some highly-finished studies were made by him for this head, from one of which the present illustration is taken. Rossetti’s Christ differs markedly in conception from that of Holman Hunt. The Christ of the older painter is pre-eminently the “Man of Sorrows,” the martyr whose whole life was a crucifixion. Rossetti shows us rather the Galilean dreamer, the peasant poet, the gentle idealist whom women and children loved. The realism of suffering, though delicately suggested by the slightly-drawn brow, the quiet tension of the features, and the bright, glowing depths of the eye, is here in abeyance. Christ is for the time an honoured guest, receiving the hospitality of the Pharisee with a gracious self-possession and an exquisite simplicity of mien. The sole suggestion, in the surrounding objects, of the tragedy that is to come, is given in the vine that trails on the walls of the house, symbolic of the great Sacrifice.

The shadow of the Cross—no longer cast into the future, but abiding on the mourners after the death of Christ—is figured by a device of singular beauty in Rossetti’s sketch of “Mary in the House of John.” In a small drawing of “The Crucifixion” he had depicted St. John leading the Madonna from the foot of Calvary. Now he shows us the new home, so strangely ignored by painters of the sacred tale, wherein the Mother and the adopted son are together at eventide. Through the window is seen a distant view of Jerusalem, and in the uncertain light the window-bars assume the form of a cross, which thus appears to rest upon the Holy City, and to stand between that quiet household and the outer world. St. John has been writing a portion of his Gospel, and pauses to strike a light, with which the Mother of Jesus kindles a lamp, hanging at the intersection of the bars; so that the light shines from the centre-point of the Cross, where the Head of Christ should be. This delicate emblem gives the touch of hope, the promise of glory through sacrifice, which lightens the darkness of the hour. So fine a use of simple imagery, so perfect an adjustment of the hope to the penalty, admirably illustrates the highest triumph of Pre-Raphaelite art,—the reconciliation of the “crucifixion principle,” the essentially Catholic element in religion, with the “resurrection principle,” peculiar to Protestantism. Mr. Forsyth, whose essays on the Pre-Raphaelites have already been quoted, makes the suggestive remark, that “In Hunt’s technique shadow always means colour as well as darkness: to see colour in shadow is the last triumph of a great painter,” and adds that “Rossetti’s colour is not merely luminous matter; it is transfigured matter.” This conception of the dual truth of Christianity—the necessity of suffering and the assurance of victory—is consistently presented both by Rossetti and Hunt; and it is not merely victory over suffering, as Protestantism insists on, which they teach; but rather victory through suffering; which is the fusion of Catholic ethics with Protestant faith.

And it is remarkable that the Pre-Raphaelites find as much inspiration for the thought of victory through suffering in the incidents of Christ’s childhood as in the story of His martyrdom. Rossetti, in his early picture of “Bethlehem Gate,” in which the Holy Family are seen in flight from the massacre of the Innocents, depicts at the side of the Virgin Mother an angel bearing a palm-branch,—the symbol of deliverance and reward. Holman Hunt begins the Resurrection with “The Triumph of the Innocents,” applies, that is, the principle of Immortality to universal life; and by the ruddy, healthy faces of his angel-children watching from Heaven over the child-Christ, he insists, as Rossetti insisted in “The Blessed Damozel,” that the unknown world must be something intimately related to the one we know, and that immortal life must be something more than the continuance of spiritual being in an immaterial sphere,—must, in short, afford real and eternal activities beyond the grave.

This recognition of the relation of sacrifice to victory leads the painters beyond the reconciliation of the individual man with God to the reconciliation of the social man with man. Something of this idea of “peace on earth” is suggested by Rossetti’s picture, “The Infant Christ Adored by a Shepherd and a King,” which now forms a triptych in Llandaff Cathedral,—the only picture directly from his hand which occupies a permanent position in an English church. In the left compartment is seen the young David as a shepherd before Goliath; in the right, the psalmist is depicted in old age, crowned as a king before God. In the centre, the Infant Christ appears as the mediator between the high and the lowly, the rich and the poor; the messenger of the “at-one-ment” of all ranks of men, united in a common worship of the Divine Child, and a common love of that Humanity of which He is the type.

A similar interpretation of the childhood of Jesus, as typical of the growth of all humanity, may fairly be drawn from Holman Hunt’s picture of “Christ in the Temple,”—a work now thoroughly familiar to English eyes, and perhaps the most popular because the least mystical of his masterpieces. The bright, bold, ingenuous face and figure of the boy, confronting with his eager questions the venerable Rabbis of the congregation, seems instinct with the life of the present age, charged with the very essence of the spirit of inquiry—of sceptical inquiry even—before which the apologists of tradition and legalism are dumfounded, and through which, from the dogma of the old world, is wrested the faith of the new.

It would be impracticable here to follow in detail the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites upon the religious paintings of their contemporaries and successors, or to estimate the exact relation of their work to that of their nearest precursor, Madox Brown. But a single example from the last-named artist, and another from the youngest of the Pre-Raphaelite group, but never numbered with the Brotherhood—Mr. Burne-Jones—may serve to illustrate still further the great religious principles of which these painters steadfastly took hold. “The Entombment” remains among the finest works of Madox Brown, and embodies, in its simple austerity, its direct pathos, a spiritual fervour akin to the highest inspirations of Holman Hunt. The dignity of the human body, the solemnity and awfulness of physical death, the tender charm of child life and child innocence, the mystery of immortality, and the apprehension of a “risen” life,—all these things are brought within the range of thought opened up by that sombre and majestic design. Seldom in modern art has the intense realism of death been so delicately handled, and yet with such uncompromising force. The faces of the women bending over the loved corpse are full of grief and perplexity, yet even in the atmosphere of death there is a subtle breath of triumph and of hope, a sense that the body is not all, that what is left is but the shell, the “house of Life;” the true Life is not dead, but gone—whither? The tender light that plays around the mourners, and the contrast of the vigorous little body of the young child with the aged and shattered frame of the dead martyr, seem to voice the eternal protest of the heart against annihilation, the irrepressible demand of the soul for a future life.