Ad Blankestijn: Proserpine by Rosetti (paintings and their stories)

Proserpine is a well-known painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted in 1874, which shows a melancholic woman with sad eyes and long black hair, holding a half-eaten pomegranate in her left hand. The pomegranate catches the viewer's gaze, the color of its flesh matching that of the woman's lips. Overall, dark tones characterize the color palette of the work. The decorative quality of the picture is accentuated by the curve of the ivy spray in the upper left part, which is echoed in the woman's arm and the rich folds of her dark green dress.

[Proserpine by Rosetti (1874)]

What are we seeing?

As the title indicates, this painting is based on a story from Roman mythology: in classical myth Proserpine was kidnapped by Pluto, the god of the underworld, to be his wife. Eating food from the underworld would cause a living person to stay there forever. Unfortunately, Proserpine had eaten six pomegranates, and so Pluto confined her to his kingdom six months of each year. Her holding a half-eaten pomegranate in the painting symbolizes her captivity.

But there is another layer: Jane Morris, the wife of Rossetti’s friend William Morris, frequently modeled for Rosetti - also for this painting. For many years she was Rosetti's lover and her situation therefore resembled that of Proserpine, going back and forth between two worlds - at least, that is what Rosetti hints at here.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti began this painting in 1871 and painted at least eight different versions, completing the last one only in 1882, the year of his death. The best known version is the above one, the seventh one from 1874, which had been commissioned by Frederick Richards Leyland, and is now on display at Tate Britain in London.

In the painting, Proserpine, like her model Jane Morris, is a magnificent woman with fine features, slender hands and pale skin which contrasts with her deep black hair. Rossetti painted this at a period in his life when his love for Jane Morris had reached the point of obsession. He himself has written about this painting:

“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."

Proserpine

Proserpine is a Roman deity, the goddess of fertility. She is the daughter of Jupiter (the king of the gods) and Ceres (the goddess of agriculture) and wife of Pluto (the god who ruled the underworld), who kidnapped her into his domain and made her his wife. She therefore became the queen of the underworld. She corresponds to Persephone in Greek mythology.

The name "Proserpine" (in Latin "Proserpina") is derived from proserpere (“to crawl out”), referring to the grain germ crawling out of the earth when spring comes.

Pluto asked Jupiter for Proserpine's hand, but Jupiter thought that her mother Ceres would never allow her daughter to live in the dark underworld. However, he gave him the freedom to kidnap her, which Pluto then did. In a meadow on the slopes of Mount Etna, where Proserpine was picking flowers, Pluto appeared with his chariot drawn by four black horses and dragged the struggling Proserpine down to the underworld. While Proserpine was being dragged to the chariot by Pluto, she called to her friends and her mother in desperation. But no one heard her. Later, out of great concern, Ceres went looking for her daughter, but couldn't find her anywhere. Eventually she learned about her daughter's abduction from the spring nymph Kyane, who was sitting at her spring when Pluto raced past with Proserpine in his chariot. The heartbroken mother finally forced Jupiter's agreement that Proserpine only had to spend half the year in the underworld. The myth symbolizes the round of the seasons: when Prosepine is in the underworld, we are in autumn and winter, when nothing grows, and when she is back in the upper world, we are in spring and summer when food plants, trees and flowers are in their glory.

Jane Morris

Jane Burden (1839-1914) was working as a waitress in an inn in 1857 when William Morris (a textile designer and artist associated with the British Arts and Crafts movement) met her and sought her as a model. He taught her manners and helped her learn French and Italian, and introduced her to music and dance - later in life she became an excellent pianist. They married in 1859. Jane was introduced into the circles of the Pre-Raphaelites where, with her pale skin and copper-red hair, she was considered an exceptional beauty. As sitter, she became associated with 31 paintings of this group. Jane was an accomplished embroiderer and worked with her husband in their furnishings business, embroidering items that he designed. But the marriage was an unhappy one, and in the late 1860s, Jane began a romantic liaison with Rossetti that lasted until 1876 (William Morris deliberately turned a blind eye). She was the model for some of his most famous paintings, and her striking appearance provided him with inspiration for over twenty years. Jane broke off the relation with Rosetti after she discovered that he had become addicted to drugs, but she remained close friends with him until the end of his life in 1882.

In the painting, Rossetti brings out the poignant situation of Proserpine, as well as that of Jane Morris, torn between her husband, the father of her two daughters, and her lover. It is an honest picture: look at Jane’s eyes and see the heaviness of her sorrow - the sorrow of a woman who knows she has been trapped forever by her own beauty.

[Jane Morris (1865, photo by John Robert Parsons)]

Dante Gabriel Rosetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London, 1828-1882) was one of the founders of a group of English painters known as the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." He was the eldest son of the Italian poet Gabriele Rossetti, who had emigrated to England. Rossetti showed an interest in literature from an early age, wanting to become a poet, but he was also attracted to painting, especially medieval Italian art. He was educated at the Royal Academy in London, where his teachers were Ford Madox Brown and William Holman Hunt.

Together with Hunt and John Everett Millais, he founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His first major work - from 1849 - was The Girlhood of Mary Virgin. The Pre-Raphaelites strove for a renewal of art by taking early Italian painting ("before Raphael") as an example. Inspired by the poetry of Dante Alighieri and the mystical poetry and painting of William Blake, Rosetti developed a symbolic-decorative style that is already moving in the direction of Art Nouveau. In the field of poetry (he also became an excellent poet) he was inspired by John Keats. He also translated Dante into English.

In 1860 he married Elizabeth Siddal, his favorite model, who died two years later. Even after her death she would remain the subject of his paintings and poems. Later models included Fanny Cornforth, Alexa Wilding and - as mentioned above - Jane Morris, the wife of William Morris.

Sonnet

On the top right of the canvas "Proserpine" is inscribed by the artist, followed by his sonnet in Italian. The same sonnet in English is inscribed on the painting's frame, which was also designed by Rosetti and which has roundels which resemble a section of a pomegranate:

        Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
        Unto this wall, – one instant and no more
        Admitted at my distant palace-door
        Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
        Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
        Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
        That chills me: and afar how far away,
        The nights that shall become the days that were.

        Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
        Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
        And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
        (Whose sounds mine inner sense in fain to bring,
        Continually together murmuring) —
        'Woe me for thee, unhappy Proserpine'.

[Incorporates some information from the English and Dutch Wikipedia]