“Then you are Pre-Raphaelite!” the other students cried, laughing, when self-willed Hunt quoted Sir Charles Ball to prove that the action of the demoniac boy in Raphael’s “Transfiguration” was all wrong. The word was caught up, turned into a challenge, P and R, two of the mystic initials that were so soon to charm and to enrage London, were formed. The B was added at the suggestion of Rossetti, whose love of the mediæval at once required a “Brotherhood.” Need it be said that there had to be seven Brothers, and that the Brotherhood was to be kept a secret? Rossetti’s brother William, who had never learnt how to draw; a nominal pupil of Hunt’s, F. G. Stephens, who had never learnt how to paint; Woolner, who was a sculptor, and James Collinson, were quickly enlisted. “Collinson,” said Rossetti, “is a born stunner.”
“Where’s your flock?” shouted out Millais. “I expected to see them behind you. Tell me all about it.”
They held their first meeting in his studio, over a set of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. The three leaders were all, at this time, eager to establish some starting-point for their art “which would be secure, if it were ever so humble.” They admired what was true in the works of Raphael as much as any one else. “Pre-Raphaelitism is not Pre-Raphaelism,” but they held that, since his day, pride and the dogged observance of rule without reference to Nature had destroyed sincerity. As they turned over the pages of the book, they hailed with delight in the old frescoes of Gozzoli that “freedom from corruption, pride, and disease” for which they sought. “Think what a revelation it was to find such work at such a moment, and to recognise it with the triple enthusiasm of our three spirits!” They all agreed that they would make a series of designs from Keats in the new manner. Millais’ “Lorenzo and Isabella,” in his friends’ judgment the most wonderful picture ever painted by a man under twenty, was the immediate fruit of this resolve.
Nature had gifted Rossetti with a hopeful temperament which was of no small service to Hunt in the dark days of discouragement that followed. When the latter was tempted to mourn over the waste of his young years in the city, the former pointed out to him that he had learnt to know men, and the ways of men, instead of mere bookish things that were “of very little use in life.” What did it matter whether the sun went round the earth or the earth went round the sun? What did anything scientific matter in comparison with Dante, with the poetry of Browning, which he would recite, over the fire, by twenty pages at a time, with Tennyson and Henry Taylor and Coventry Patmore?[6] When Mr. James, the city man, the owner of the original colour-box, reduced Hunt to despair by his damning criticism of the new picture “Rienzi,” “But the man’s a born fool!” exclaimed Rossetti, with screams of laughter. When pounds, shillings, and pence ran low, “Can you not understand,” said he, “that there are hundreds of young aristocrats and millionaires growing up who will be only too glad to get due direction how to make the country as glorious as Greece was, and as Italy?” In Paris, in Belgium, in the country he was the most delightful of companions, and it was he who led as the Brethren walked up and down Stanhope Street after their work, singing the Marseillaise or Mourir pour la patrie.
Throughout his youth, however, Rossetti acted on impulse, without consideration as to the effect upon others. When it was time to send in for the Academy he was not quite ready with the charming picture painted in Hunt’s studio, and, for the sake of a few more days in which to finish, he sent instead to the Hyde Park Gallery, which opened a week earlier than Burlington House. “The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin,” signed with the mystic P.R.B., the meaning of which was then unknown, except to the seven Brothers, appeared, therefore, a week earlier than Hunt’s “Rienzi” and Millais’ “Lorenzo and Isabella,” signed with the same initials, and, for good and for evil, Rossetti began to be spoken of as the precursor of a new school. The effect on him was twofold. Unable to endure hostile criticism, at the first touch of it, the year after, when he showed “The Annunciation,” he resolved that he would never again exhibit in public; but, pleased at the pre-eminence given him by those who were not behind the scenes, he withdrew from partnership with Hunt in the studio; and more and more, as time went on, from his society and that of Millais.
“The Apostles regarded it (the Scapegoat) as a symbol of the Christian Church, teaching both them and their followers submission and patience under affliction.… One important part of the ceremony was the binding a scarlet fillet round the head of this second goat when he was conducted away from the Temple, hooted at with execration, and stoned until he was lost to sight in the wilderness. The High Priest kept a portion of this scarlet fillet in the Temple, with the belief that it would become white if the corresponding fillet on the fugitive goat had done so, as a signal that the Almighty had forgiven their iniquities.… The whole image is a perfect one of the persecution and trials borne by the Apostolic Church, and perhaps by the Church, as subtly understood, to this day.”
The picture was originally called “Azazel”: it was painted near Oosdoom by the Dead Sea. “Every minute the mountains became more gorgeous and solemn, the whole scene more unlike anything ever portrayed. Afar all seemed of the brilliancy and preciousness of jewels, while near, it proved to be only salt and burnt lime, with decayed trees and broken branches brought down by the rivers feeding the lake. Skeletons of animals, which had perished for the most part in crossing the Jordan and the Jabbok, had been swept here, and lay salt-covered, so that birds and beasts of prey left them untouched. It was a most appropriate scene for my subject, and each minute I rejoiced more in my work.”
W. H. H.
Sir Cuthbert Quilter is the owner of this picture.