Francesca da Rimini [Paolo and Francesca], by William Dyce, R.A. (1806-1864). 1837. Oil on canvas. 72 x 86 1/4 inches (183 x 219 cm). Collection of National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, accession no. NG 460. Image reproduced here for the purpose of non-commercial research courtesy of the National Galleries of Scotland via Art UK. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Francesca da Rimini was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1837, no. 49. Dyce himself acknowledged it as the principal picture he had painted in Edinburgh prior to his move to London. The subject was inspired by the two ill-fated lovers damned for their adultery, Paolo Malatesta and Francesca di Rimini, that were described by Dante in canto V in his The Divine Comedy. Because Dyce felt the subject might be unfamiliar to the general viewing public, he exhibited the painting with an explanation written by the Italian Renaissance author Giovanni Boccaccio:
Guido da Polenta, engaged his daughter Francesca in marriage to Gianciotto, the eldest son of his enemy, the master of Rimini. Gianciotto, who was hideously deformed, foresaw that if he presented himself in person, he would be rejected by the lady. He resolved, therefore, to marry her by proxy, and sent… his younger brother Paolo, surnamed the Beautiful. Francesca saw Paolo arrive and… imagined she beheld her future husband. That mistake was the commencement of her passion; and it was not until after her arrival at Rimini that she was undeceived – (Boccaccio). Paolo and she were shortly after assassinated by Gianciotto in a fit of jealousy. [qtd. in Fergusson 104]
When the painting was exhibited in 1837 the canvas showed the moment just proceeding the murder of the young couple where the lovers share a chaste kiss while reading the story of the adulterous lovers Lancelot and Guinevere from an illuminated book held on Francesca's lap. In the background behind the balustrade to the left the jealous brother Gianciotto, a dagger held in his right hand, could originally be seen. The painting had been acquired by the Royal Scottish Academy in 1864, but by this time the left-hand portion of the canvas had significantly deteriorated, especially the portion containing the figure of Gianciotto which had been heavily restored. In 1881 Sir J. Noel Paton recommended to the Council of the Royal Scottish Academy that the picture "should be reduced in size by cutting away the objectional part containing the figure in the background, this figure not being painted by Dyce" (qtd. in Fergusson 104). Fergusson questions, however, whether it was the damage to the painting that led to its reduction or whether Paton just felt that the un-idealised figure of Gianciotto spoilt the composition (104). Fergusson felt that Dyce considered Francesca to be morally innocent: "Dyce's interpretation of Francesca gives her the demure, downcast countenance of a Madonna, as she turns her head away from Paolo's chaste kiss. Later versions of the subject by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Frederick Watts are emphatic in the lovers' passion and suffering, but it seems that Dyce questioned the guilt of Francesca and he portrays her as being morally innocent" (105). Dyce's choice of title, rather than calling the picture Paolo and Francesca, certainly suggests that the focus of the composition is on her and her role in the tragedy.
Influences on the Painting
Marcia Pointon has discussed the influences on this painting and how it fits in with other versions of this subject: "Francesca da Rimini is a key work and one which enables us to see William Dyce's position in relation to the culture of his age. We are bound to notice the choice of a subject which had recently gained enormous popularity and was to become even more celebrated by artists as the century progressed. Flaxman's illustrations to Dante were published in 1807 and influenced Koch and Ingres, and probably also Keats who wrote his sonnet on the lovers in 1819 after a vivid dream. Delacroix painted a water-colour of the subject in1826 and William's friend, C. W. Cope exhibited his Paolo and Francesca in London the same year as Francesca da Rimini was on show in Edinburgh. Later both Rossetti and Alexander Munro, the Scottish sculptor interpreted the subject. In their work the sensuousness and erotic passion implicit in the subject is stressed, but in Dyce's it is subdued and contained within a rigidly controlled composition. Dyce's attenuated, adolescent figure of Paolo, leaning sharply forward, represented in flat, linear silhouette probably owes something to the influence of Flaxman. Another source might have been Retzsch's Romeo and Juliet of 1836 or even Overbeck's Italia and Germania of 1811-28 which Dyce would certainly have known" (40-41).
This subject was to become popular with the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. D. G. Rossetti's watercolour version of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, in Tate Britain, dates to 1855. It is a triptych with the left-hand panel showing the lovers embraced in a passionate kiss. Alexander Munro's marble version of Paolo and Francesca at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery dates to 1851-52. The plaster version is at Wallington in Northumbria. The artist most indebted to Dyce's version was his fellow Scotsman Joseph Noel Paton, who did several versions of this subject. The principal version in oil shows Gianciotto in the background about to murder the lovers as they embrace and kiss. There is a small watercolour version in a private collection of a nocturnal scene of Paolo and Francesca sitting on a bench in the garden and reading a book. Paton also did a version, now in the Bury Art Museum, entitled Dante Meditating the Episode of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatestashowing Dante seated, deep in thought, and meditating on the two lovers naked and embracing as they drift around one of the circles of hell.
Bibliography
Ferguson, Olga. William Dyce and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision. Ed. Jennifer Melville. Aberdeen: Aberdeen City Council, 2006, cat. 16, 104-105.
Francesca da Rimini. Art UK. Web. 14 December 2024.
Pointon, Marcia. William Dyce 1806-1864. A Critical Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, 40-41.
Created 14 December 2024