Pre-Raphaelitism -- Great Britain; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
The most important work of 1859 is a highly-finished little head in
oils, called _Bocca Baciata_, which was bought by the late Mr. Boyce.
The model for this was Miss Fanny Cornforth, afterwards Mrs. Schott,
whose florid type of beauty reappears in a series of sensuous
pictures of the kind that Rossetti began to paint after
1862--_Aurelia_ (_Fazio's Mistress_), _The Blue Bower_, _The Lady at
her Toilet_, _Lilith_, and_ The Lady of the Fan_. These pictures,
and numerous portraits in oil and water-colour, give a sufficiently
recognizable idea of this model, who exercised almost as remarkable
an influence over Rossetti's life as over his art.
_Bonifazio's Mistress_, a specially charming little water-colour, was
painted in 1860. It shows a lady (dressed in the same brightly
be-ribanded flounces as Lucretia Borgia wears in the little 1851
group) who has been sitting to her lover, a painter, when suddenly
she has fallen back in her chair, dead.
The connection of this subject with the poet, Bonifazio (or Fazio)
degli Uberti is entirely fanciful. There can be little doubt that it
was intended to illustrate Rossetti's own story of "St. Agnes of
Intercession." _Bonifazio's Mistress_ has no connection whatever
either in subject or composition with the oil painting of the same
name done in 1863, and afterwards re-named _Aurelia_. The latter is
simply a three-quarter length figure of a lady plaiting her hair
before a toilet glass.
This (1860) was the year of Rossetti's marriage, as has already been
stated, and in June he was at Paris on his honeymoon. While there he
executed two pen-and-ink drawings, one of which was the design of
_How they met Themselves_, done to replace the earlier version of
1851, which had been lost. The other represents a scene from
Boswell's "Life of Johnson," a curious source of inspiration for
Rossetti, rendered more remarkable from the fact that the incident
chosen is of a humorous and spicy character. Dr. Maxwell told the
story how two young women from Staffordshire had come up to town to
consult Johnson about Methodism, in which they were much interested.
"Come," said he, "you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the
Mitre, and we will talk over that subject"; which they did, and after
dinner he took one of them on his knee, and fondled her for
half-an-hour together.
In 1861 Rossetti's translations from the Italian poets were at last
published, together with the "Vita Nuova." Rossetti thought out a
very charming design of two lovers kissing in a rose-garden, which he
proposed to etch on copper for the title-page. The plate, however,
displeased him, and he destroyed it. The central idea of this design
reappears in _Love's Greeting_, a panel designed for the Red House,
and in a water-colour of 1864 inscribed _Roman de la Rose_, in which
Love appears overshadowing the kissing pair with his wings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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