Proserpine. Proserpine is an oil painting on canvas by English artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted in 1874 and now in Tate Britain.
In his Proserpine, the artist illustrates in his typical Pre-Raphaelite style the Roman goddess who lives in the underworld during Winter. Although Rossetti inscribed the date 1874 on the picture, he worked for seven years on eight separate canvases before he finished with it. His Proserpine, like his model Jane Morris, is an exquisitely beautiful woman, with delicate facial features, slender hands, and flawlessly pale skin set off by her thick raven hair.
Rossetti painted it at a time when his mental health was extremely precarious and his love for Jane Morris was at its most obsessive. Rossetti wrote about Proserpine She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand.
As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the sight of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it, immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as the attribute of a goddess.
The ivy branch in the background may be taken as a symbol of clinging memory. Unable to decide as a young man whether to concentrate on painting or poetry, his work is infused with his poetic imagination and an individual interpretation of literary sources. His accompanying sonnet
In his Proserpine, the artist illustrates in his typical Pre-Raphaelite style the Roman goddess who lives in the underworld during Winter. Although Rossetti inscribed the date 1874 on the picture, he worked for seven years on eight separate canvases before he finished with it. His Proserpine, like his model Jane Morris, is an exquisitely beautiful woman, with delicate facial features, slender hands, and flawlessly pale skin set off by her thick raven hair.
Rossetti painted it at a time when his mental health was extremely precarious and his love for Jane Morris was at its most obsessive. Rossetti wrote about Proserpine She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand.
As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the sight of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it, immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as the attribute of a goddess.
The ivy branch in the background may be taken as a symbol of clinging memory. Unable to decide as a young man whether to concentrate on painting or poetry, his work is infused with his poetic imagination and an individual interpretation of literary sources. His accompanying sonnet
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