Pre-Raphaelite Exhibit

I was in DC yesterday, and got a chance to visit the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit at the Smithsonian.

The admission price is: free,
but you have to get to DC.

I've always thought of the Pre-Raphaelites as quirky, but I do like some of their work, including this one, which is hanging on the wall at the show:



I learned that it has rather a sad story behind it.

Rossetti modeled Beatrice after his deceased wife and frequent model, Elizabeth Siddal, who died in 1862. The painting was created from the numerous drawings that Rossetti had made of Siddal during their time together. The symbolism in the painting of a red dove, a messenger of love, relates back to Rossetti's love for Siddal with the white poppy representing laudanum and the means of her death.

She was sickly... and got hooked on laudanum, an opiate. There were rumors, at the time, that the death was a suicide.

In an 1873 letter to his friend William Morris, Rossetti said he intended the painting "not as a representation of the incident of the death of Beatrice, but as an ideal of the subject, symbolized by a trance or sudden spiritual transfiguration."

He rendered her in paint
as a beloved saint.