"La Ghirlandata" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

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La Ghirlandata

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

1873

Oil on canvas

124 x 85 cm

Guildhall Gallery, London

City of London Corporation, by kind permission

Lionel Lambourne describes La Ghirlandata as "a portrayal of the beautiful Alexa Wilding," a professional model who was one of Rossetti's inspirations for "the most sinuous" of his "three-quarter and full-length paintings" (76). It is a good example of the typically red-haired, full-lipped and long-necked women whom the artist was portraying at this time. [continues below.]

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Related material

The Rossettian Dream

As the Guildhall Art Gallery's brief guide points out, La Ghirlandata issues in "a new aesthetic of painting" and indeed the whole "Cult of Beauty," which would develop into the full-blown Aesthetic Movement (6). F. G. Stephens described the painting in this way:

It shows the green-clad Lady of the Garlands sitting among the golden foliage of a thorn tree and mvrtle copse; her hands are drawing music from a harp beside her seat, and her face proved her soul to be absorbed in the sound she produces. On either side, over her shoulders, an angel looks from between the glowing upper leaves of the copse, as if Heaven itself waited upon her song. Round the summit of the harp is slung a garland of roses and honey-suckles, the sweetest of earthly flowers, and the sky above, where the day of earth is dying, hints in its calm, ardent depths of a sweetness still beyond. The evening breeze has just risen and begins to lift the light drapery above her shoulders. In colour, this picture is chiefly a study of green, interspersed with blue of various shades — the deep blue aconite which appears at the base of the composition, the bright bird that flits through the trees, the wing pattern painted on the instrument, and the colour fading from the sky. These hues are balanced by the golden bronze of the lady's hair and the dusky-coloured harp, an instrument which is solid, with strings on each side. [73-84]

Lambourne explains that the work was painted at William Morris's home at time, Kelmscott Manor, and that May Morris, the Morrises' younger daughter, modelled for the angels looking down from the top corners. He adds that William Michael Rossetti, the artist's brother, said the fundamental idea of the painting was "to indicate, more or less, youth, beauty, and the faculty for art worthy of a celestial audience, all shadowed by mortal doom" (qtd. 77). Stephens saw no such melancholy undertones in the painting, but these remarks by the artist's brother do help to explain the presence of the angels and the harp, and of course the roses that are such a potent symbol of beauty destined to fade and die.

Stephens' refusal to see any hint here of "Beauty which must die" is a little odd, especially since he accepts that the blue flowers in the lower part of the picture are aconite (another name for poisonous monkswood, which William Rossetti thought they were supposed to be, but which he felt looked more like harmless larkspur [see Stephens 85n.]). In fact, any small flower tends to suggest the fragility and transience of beauty. A well-known example can be found in Millais' Little Speedwell's Darling Blue. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Bibliography

Guide to City's Collection Displays: A Celebration of 15 Years. Guildhall Art Gallery, 2015.

Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting. London and New York: Phaidon, 1999.

Stephens, F. G. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Seeley & Co., 1905. Internet Archive. Contributed by Robarts Library, University of Toronto. We. 30 January 2015.

Last modified 27 June 2020