To resume the tale of early work, in 1851 Rossetti continued to be engaged on small subjects of a mediaeval or dramatic character. We have, for instance, the charming little group called Borgia, in which the famous Lucretia is seen seated with a lute in her hands, to the music of which two children are dancing. Over her shoulders lean on the one side the bloated Pope Alexander VI, on the other her brother Caesar, beating time with a knife against a wine-glass on the table, and blowing the rose-petals from her hair. Lucretia's white gown is of ample folds, with elaborate sleeves, looped up all over with coloured ribbons and bows, a device which so took Rossetti's fancy that he repeated it in Bonifazio's Mistress (1860).
In the same year (1851) was produced the first design for a subject of weird and ghostly conception, called How they met Themselves. This depicts a pair of lovers wandering at twilight in a wood, and suddenly confronted with their own doubles. The legend of the Doppelganger was one of a class of mysterious horrors which greatly appealed to Rossetti's imagination, and which fascinated him from boyhood. Few but he however would have dared to draw it, and fewer still could have succeeded with it. The first design just referred to, was drawn in pen-and-ink, and was destroyed or lost at an early date; but Rossetti redrew it in 1860 whilst at Paris on his honeymoon, and four years later painted two water-colour versions.
To the year following, 1852, belongs a remarkable water-colour, representing Giotto painting a famous portrait of Dante which was discovered on removing the plaster from the wall of the Bargello in 1839. Giotto is in dull red, with brocaded sleeves turned back. To his left is seated Dante, cutting a pomegranate in his hand, and gazing down with a rapt expression to where Beatrice is passing in a church procession. Behind Giotto stands his master, Cimabue, watching the work which is to eclipse his; and behind Dante leans his rival, Cavalcanti, holding in his hand a book of Guinicelli, symbolizing thereby the three generations of poets.
Nothing else of importance is catalogued under the year 1852, but in 1853 we come to one or two well-known designs and pictures. First may be mentioned the pen-and-ink drawing entitled Hesterna Rosa, founded upon the plaintive song of Elena in Sir Henry Taylor's "Philip van Artevelde":
"Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife
To heart of neither wife nor maid,
'Lead we not here a jolly life
Betwixt the shine and shade?'
Quoth heart of neither maid nor wife
To tongue of neither wife nor maid,
'Thou wag'st, but I am sore with strife,
And feel like flowers that fade.'"
The scene represents two gamblers throwing dice, and their mistresses, one of whom in a fit of shame is covering her face. She is the "yesterday's rose." The other clasps her arms round the neck of her lover, and is singing a merry song. An innocent little child near by is touching a lute, and Rossetti has completed the other aspect of the scene by putting in an ape scratching itself, a Düreresque touch which he added also in the little Borgia group. A water-colour version of the same subject was painted in 1865, and a larger version, bearing the title Elena's Song, was painted in 1871.
The starting of Found is one of the most memorable events in connection with the year 1853. The subject is a countryman or drover recognizing in a fallen woman of the streets his own lost sweetheart. Found was commissioned by a Mr. MacCracken, who was also the purchaser of Ecce Ancilla, in 1853, and several studies were made for it. The picture however was never finished. "It was," writes Mr. W. M. Rossetti, "a source of lifelong vexation to my brother and to the gentlemen, some three or four in succession, who commissioned him to finish it." After his death, Sir Edward Burne-Jones consented to give a sort of finish to the picture by washing in blue sky. In its half-completed state it passed into the possession of Mr. William Graham, and after his death it went to America.
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A short note on Rossetti's movements during the period just covered may be given here. We left him in 1848, after a few months' work at Madox Brown's, sharing a studio with Holman Hunt in Cleveland Street, Soho, and painting at the Girlhood of the Virgin. At the beginning of 1851, he took in common with Deverell the first floor rooms at No. 17, Red Lion Square—the rooms which Morris and Burne-Jones occupied subsequently from 1856 to 1859, and which served as a cradle for the famous firm. In November, 1852, he took a set of rooms at 14, Chatham Place, Blackfriars, on a site now cleared away, overlooking the river and presenting other advantages. Here he remained for nearly ten years, including the brief two years of his married life, and here he accomplished what many judges consider the most interesting portion of his work. He had by now acquired a certain measure of independence as a painter, which went on increasing as generous or wealthy patrons attached themselves. That his progress was slow, and that for many years he was reduced to selling water-colours of priceless beauty for comparatively trifling sums, was the result partly of a determination which he formed never to exhibit his work. This resolve, which later on became a sort of mania, is said to have been due in the first instance to the discouraging reception of Ecce Ancilla Domini in 1850. For a long time, of course, it prevented his being known at all or appreciated by possible purchasers, and his work circulated amongst a narrow circle of artistic friends. In the days of his greatness it may have had an opposite effect by arousing curiosity, and producing a feeling of pique. Buyers were attracted towards a man who was notorious for despising the public eye, and whose work was spoken of with bated breath as something supremely precious. With some few exceptions, however, it is essential to remember that Rossetti's work was absolutely unseen by the public, who became acquainted with him as a poet long before they knew him even dimly as a painter. The effects of this ignorance are still discernible. Even after two great exhibitions of his works in London, and after the publication of a wide selection from his designs, there are people who believe that Rossetti never painted but from one model, and that all his pictures are distinguished by impossible lips and a goitrous development of neck.