Proserpine - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Description
A portrait of Jane Morris as the Roman goddess Proserpine, captured in a moment of melancholic reflection with a pomegranate in hand.
Proserpine, painted in 1874, represents a mature phase in the career of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The subject is Jane Morris, who appears frequently in the artist's later work. She is depicted as the Roman goddess Proserpine, condemned to spend half of the year in the underworld after consuming pomegranate seeds. The composition focuses on her melancholic expression and the symbolic fruit held in her hand.
Rossetti employs a dark, moody palette dominated by deep teals and blacks, which contrast with the pale skin of the sitter. The drapery of her gown is rendered with attention to the texture of the fabric, creating a sense of weight and volume. To the left, a sprig of ivy climbs a stone wall, while an incense burner sits at the bottom, adding to the atmosphere of confinement and ritual. A sonnet written by Rossetti in Italian is inscribed in the upper right corner, providing a literary context for the visual narrative.
The painting reflects the artist's preoccupation with themes of entrapment and longing. The figure is positioned against a shallow background, which pushes the subject toward the viewer. This arrangement creates a sense of intimacy and psychological tension. The work is one of several versions Rossetti produced of this subject, demonstrating his methodical approach to refining his compositions. The lighting is focused, drawing attention to the face and the pomegranate, which serves as the primary iconographic element. The overall effect is one of quiet contemplation, characteristic of the later Pre-Raphaelite style.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
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- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
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- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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Materials & Sizing
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
Proserpine - 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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