‘Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards’, an illustration for an anonymous poem, by Frederick Sandys (1832–1904)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Frederick Sandys —> Next]

Rosamund

Frederick Sandys

1861

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain

5 x 4½ inches

Illustration for Once a Week (November 1861), p.631.

[Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over text to find links.]

Details

Side of desk with Madonna and child

Skull, rosary, and crucifix

Background upper left

Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Sandys at his most Rossettian, this image is clearly inspired by the older artist’s design of ‘Mariana in the South’ in the Moxon Tennyson of 1857. In Rossetti’s image the female character kisses the feet of Christ; here, she seems about to kiss a skull. The faces of the two females are virtually interchangeable, and Sandys recreates and takes to a new level of quaint pointlessness the catalogue of curiosity-shop objects that clutter Rossetti’s illustration. With its swirling hair and flames, its heraldic background, miniature freize and draperies, ‘Rosamund’ typifies the tensions between depth and pattern, narrative and atmosphere, that are central to second stage Pre-Raphaelitism. It is also superbly cut by Swain, and must be one of the most striking and enigmatic works of its period.

Bibliography

Once a Week. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1861.

Poems by Alfred Tennyson. London: Edward Moxon, 1857.

Frederick
Sandys

Last modified 19 May 2013