“Oh loose me! Seest thou not my Bridegroom’s face That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss, My hair, my tears, He craves to-day:—and oh! What words can tell what other day and place Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His? He needs me, calls me, loves me, let me go!” “HEAD OF CHRIST.” Finished study for “Mary Magdalene.” _By permission of Mr. Moncure D. Conway._ [Illustration] The face of the Magdalene has been said to present Rossetti’s ideal of spiritual beauty, in contrast with the physical beauty of “Lilith” and the intellectual beauty of “Sibylla Palmifera;” but as Rossetti himself afterwards applied the title of “Soul’s Beauty” to “Sibylla Palmifera,” the distinction can hardly be pursued very far. The head of Christ (for which Mr. Burne-Jones is said to have sat as a model) is of a more peculiar interest and value; being the only serious attempt at the portrayal of the central figure in Christian art which remains to us from Rossetti’s hand. Some highly-finished studies were made by him for this head, from one of which the present illustration is taken. Rossetti’s Christ differs markedly in conception from that of Holman Hunt. The Christ of the older painter is pre-eminently the “Man of Sorrows,” the martyr whose whole life was a crucifixion. Rossetti shows us rather the Galilean dreamer, the peasant poet, the gentle idealist whom women and children loved. The realism of suffering, though delicately suggested by the slightly-drawn brow, the quiet tension of the features, and the bright, glowing depths of the eye, is here in abeyance. Christ is for the time an honoured guest, receiving the hospitality of the Pharisee with a gracious self-possession and an exquisite simplicity of mien. The sole suggestion, in the surrounding objects, of the tragedy that is to come, is given in the vine that trails on the walls of the house, symbolic of the great Sacrifice.