Love's Messenger. Love's Messenger is an 1885 watercolor by Marie Spartali Stillman in which a dove has just carried a love letter to a woman standing in front of an open window.
She wears a red rose, and has just put down her embroidery of a blind-folded Cupid. The painting, paper mounted on wood, was purchased in 1901 by Samuel Bancroft and is now in the Delaware Art Museum.
Love's Messenger reflects the influence of both early Pre-Raphaelite painting and Italian Renaissance painting. The symbols portrayed in the painting, including the dove, rose, ivy, and the blind-folded Cupid suggest constancy, fidelity, and loveliness in full bloom, but also suggest beauty on the cusp of decay, sensuality, and the pain Cupid's arrows may inflict.
The presence of Venus is shown by the rose and the dove, so that the scene may offer a contrast between the beauty, love, and abundance of Venus and the sensuality and unpredictability of her son Cupid. The artist modestly described the painting in 1906: I wish I could tell you something interesting about my pictures at Mr. Bancroft's they are merely studies of heads done for the pleasure of painting.
The effect of a fair head in a certain bull's eye window of a friend's studio where I was working one winter suggested Love's messenger-that is all. is merely a study from a model. My daughter Effie who was then at school not able to sit for me to complete it from h
She wears a red rose, and has just put down her embroidery of a blind-folded Cupid. The painting, paper mounted on wood, was purchased in 1901 by Samuel Bancroft and is now in the Delaware Art Museum.
Love's Messenger reflects the influence of both early Pre-Raphaelite painting and Italian Renaissance painting. The symbols portrayed in the painting, including the dove, rose, ivy, and the blind-folded Cupid suggest constancy, fidelity, and loveliness in full bloom, but also suggest beauty on the cusp of decay, sensuality, and the pain Cupid's arrows may inflict.
The presence of Venus is shown by the rose and the dove, so that the scene may offer a contrast between the beauty, love, and abundance of Venus and the sensuality and unpredictability of her son Cupid. The artist modestly described the painting in 1906: I wish I could tell you something interesting about my pictures at Mr. Bancroft's they are merely studies of heads done for the pleasure of painting.
The effect of a fair head in a certain bull's eye window of a friend's studio where I was working one winter suggested Love's messenger-that is all. is merely a study from a model. My daughter Effie who was then at school not able to sit for me to complete it from h
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