Portraits in Plaster, from the Collection of Laurence HuttonHutton, Laurence
History
Portraits in Plaster, from the Collection of Laurence Hutton
Hutton, Laurence
Masks (Sculpture); Portraits
The mask of Rossetti was made by Brucciani, after death. Only three or
four copies were cast, and the mould is in the possession of Mr. William
M. Rossetti, through whose courtesy I am able to reproduce it here, and
who writes: “I should say that my family and myself do not at all like
the version of my brother’s face presented by the mould and cast. In
especial, singular though it may sound, the dimensions of the forehead
seem wofully narrowed and belied. But of course, from a certain point of
view, the cast tells truth of its own kind.”
Mr. Hall Caine, writing of his own copy of the mask, says: “I ought
perhaps to add that it does not give a good impression of Dante
Rossetti. The upper part of the head is very noble, but the lower part
is somewhat repellant.”
A fourth copy belongs to Mr. George F. Watts, the painter, whose
portrait of Rossetti is so well known.
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[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI]
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An anonymous writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for January, 1893, who
seems to have known Rossetti intimately, thus describes the head and
front of the poet: “He was short, squat, bull-doggish; he belonged to
the Cavour type, but the sallow face was massive and powerful. The
impression of solidity is somewhat toned down in Watts’s portrait, and
the face is thinner and more worn than when I knew him. Sleepless nights
and protracted pain may have changed him in later years and made the
ideal Rossetti more manifest. Except for the meditative, tranquil eye
(one thought of the ox-eyed Janus), there was nothing ideal about him.
He was intensely Italian, indeed, but it was the sleek and well-fed
citizen of Milan or Genoa that he recalled, not the slim and romantic
hero of Verdi or Donizetti.”
Cavour, according to George Eliot, who once got a glimpse of him in an
Italian railway station, was a man pleasant to look upon, with a smile
half kind and half caustic. He gave her the impression that “he thought
of many matters, but thanked Heaven and made no boast of them.”
Elsewhere she said: “The pleasantest sight was Count Cavour in plainest
dress, with a head full of power, mingled with _bonhomie_.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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