Page 31 - Studio International - January 1973

Far left)
Ecce Ancilla Domini 1850
The Annunciation)
)il and canvas on
panel, 28 5/8 x 16 1/2 in.
Photo courtesy Tate Gallery

Left)
The Wedding of St George
and Princess Sabra 1857
Watercolour, 13 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.
'hoto courtesy Tate Gallery

This is in complete contrast to Arthur's Tomb
(I854/5), one of the finest of Rossetti's
watercolour drawings. Here the wide oblong
shape of the picture constricts the thrusting
movement of Launcelot who leans over the
tomb in a clumsy passionate advance to
Guinevere, and constricts, too, her stiff
rejection in an attitude, cramped and angular as
at prayer, which recalls early Pre-Raphaelite
poses. The claustrophobic design of the drawing
exactly catches the intensity of frustrated
passion it depicts. This Guinevere with her strict
face and gesture recalls the idealized and
spiritualized qualities Rossetti found in
Elizabeth Siddal, just as Launcelot's movement
conveys his frustrated desire to comprehend and
possess them. We can compare the emotion
expressed here with two informal pen sketches
of a year earlier. D. G. Rossetti Sitting to Above)
)ante's Dream 1871
Elizabeth Siddal and Giorgione Painting. Where Oil, 83 x 125 in.
Arthur's Tomb is stylized and patterned, these Photo courtesy
are realistic and instantaneous. The first is Walker Art Gallery
almost painfully immediate in its suggestion of Left)
the relationship between the two. Rossetti sits )ante's Dream at the time of
as if he were bound, antagonistic but he Death of Beatrice 5856
Watercolour, 18 1/2 x 25 3/4 in.
obsessively fixed as he stares at her; she leans 'hoto courtesy Tate Gallery
forward intent on what she is doing. The
suppressed resentment, the passion on the point
of breaking out which the sketch implies is
curiously like the more objective effect of
Arthur's Tomb. In Giorgione Painting the roles
are reversed. The model (Elizabeth) sits placidly
while the artist leans forward to his canvas
and gazes at her with ferocious intensity; the
whole line of the drawing slopes diagonally in
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