Mnemosyne - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Description
A late Pre-Raphaelite portrait by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, featuring Jane Morris as the Greek personification of memory.
Mnemosyne, the Greek personification of memory, is depicted here by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in a work completed shortly before his death. The painting features Jane Morris, a frequent model for the artist, who embodies the ethereal and melancholic aesthetic characteristic of his later period. She stands in a frontal pose, her gaze directed towards the viewer with a sense of detachment.
Rossetti employs a muted palette dominated by deep greens and earthy tones, which creates a sombre atmosphere. The figure is draped in a flowing green garment that falls in soft folds, contrasting with the structured, glowing lamp she holds in her right hand. A second, smaller lamp rests near her left hand, accompanied by a single pansy, a flower often associated with remembrance in Victorian symbolism. The background is dark and indistinct, suggesting a twilight setting that focuses attention entirely on the figure.
This work reflects the artist's preoccupation with idealised beauty and classical mythology. The composition is balanced and static, typical of Rossetti's later portraits where the narrative is secondary to the mood and the physical presence of the subject. The application of paint is smooth, allowing for subtle transitions of light across the skin and fabric. As a late work, it demonstrates the artist's move away from the detailed naturalism of his early career towards a more symbolic and atmospheric style. The painting remains a primary example of the aesthetic concerns that occupied the Pre-Raphaelite circle during the late nineteenth century, focusing on the intersection of classical themes and personal obsession.
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Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Mnemosyne - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Artist Biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
He was born in London to an Italian political exile and named after the author of the Divine Comedy. His father was a professor of Italian at King's College. The household ran on poetry, politics, and argument. Rossetti wrote verse throughout his life and considered himself a poet as much as a painter.
His early paintings are small, bright, and meticulously detailed in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini have the flat, jewelled quality of medieval altarpieces. After 1860 the style changed. The paintings became larger, more sensual, and dominated by the face and figure of Jane Burden, who was William Morris's wife.
The relationship between Rossetti, Morris, and Jane is one of the more uncomfortable triangles in art history. Morris married her. Rossetti painted her obsessively. She modelled for Proserpine, La Pia de' Tolomei, and dozens of other works in which she appears as a mythological woman trapped in an unwanted situation. Whether the affair was physical remains debated. Morris, characteristically, said nothing publicly and channelled his feelings into wallpaper.
Rossetti buried a manuscript of his poems in his wife Lizzie Siddal's coffin when she died of a laudanum overdose in 1862. Seven years later he had the coffin exhumed to retrieve them. He published the poems. He was addicted to chloral hydrate by then and increasingly paranoid. He died in 1882, at fifty-three.
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