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In his Pygmalion cycle Edward Burne-Jones applied a medieval aesthetic to classical or Italianate subject matter, as Christopher Wood notes: “although the subjects are classical, and the colors Italianate, Burne-Jones has invested the Pygmalion story with an atmosphere of medieval courtly love, rather than classical legend.” A somewhat opposite situation occurs with The Beguiling of Merlin, in which Burne-Jones depicts a medieval theme in a Renaissance mode. The subject of the painting, the enchantment of Merlin by the sorceress Nimue, derives directly from a medieval French Arthurian romance. However, whereas Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s medievalesque paintings were often unrealistic and two-dimensional, Burne-Jones endows his figures with an appearance of verisimilitude and of perspective. He models Nimue’s garment so that it resembles actual drapery, and the projection of her right hand into the picture plane suggests the existence of a three-dimensional space within the frame of the painting. Both these characteristics call to mind, not actual medieval art, but rather the work of Burne-Jones’s major influence Michelangelo. Burne-Jones also makes use of sfumato, a stylistic trademark of Leonardo, in Nimue’s face and in the trees behind her. Though this painting illustrates a medieval narrative, it does so in the style of the Renaissance.

Pygmalion and the Image
The Heart Desires
The Hand Refrains
The Godhead Fires
The Soul Attains

The Beguiling of Merlin, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, 1874, Oil-on-canvas

Mrs. Morris and the Wombat, c.1869, pen and ink

“Oh! How the family affections combat
Within this heart; and each hour flings a bomb at
My burning soul; neither from owl nor from bat
Can peace be gained, until I clasp my wombat!”

These “mock-heroic” lines were written by DG Rossetti to his model and muse, Jane Burden Morris.

“A remarkable drawing of Jane Morris and the wombat in the British Museum illustrates the degree to which lover and pet merged in Rossetti’s mind as objects of sanctification. Each of them wears a halo. But Jane has the wombat on a leash, and it seems clear that Rossetti also used his pet wombat as a cruelly comical emblem for Jane’s long-suffering, cuckolded husband. Since university days Morris was known to his friends as ‘Topsy’; the name Rossetti chose for his Wombat was ‘Top’.”

Maria Francesca Rossetti (17 February 1827 - 24 November 1876)

Best known for her text…
Shadow of Dante
Being an Essay
Towards Studying Himself, His World
and His Pilgrimage
(Digitized by Google)

Scant information available…
At the age of 46, Maria joined the Society of All Saints, an Anglican religious order for women. She made an English translation of the Monastic Diurnal for her order, The Day Hours and Other Offices as Used by the Sisters of All Saints, which was used by her order until 1922. She was buried in the convent plot at Brompton Cemetery. (Wikipedia)

We know her sister, Christina, dedicated Goblin Market to her…

Illustration for the cover of Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862), by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription – there are a few references such as these in brother William Michael’s publication…

Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family-Letters with a Memoir (Volume One)
authored by William Michael Rossetti, published in 1895

IV.
CHILDHOOD.

Our house, No. 38 Charlotte Street, was a fairly neat but decidedly small one: it is smaller inside than it looks viewed from outside. I can remember a little about it, but not much. Towards 1836 the family had outgrown it, and removed to No. 50 in the same street—a larger but still far indeed from being a spacious dwelling. This house is now the office of a Registrar of births, deaths, and marriages; and, singularly

enough, when I had to record in 1876 the death of my sister Maria, I found that the place for dong this was the very house in which she had so long resided. Soon after Gabriele Rossetti settled in Charlotte Street it began to go down in character, and at times it became the extreme reverse of “respectable.” Dante Rossetti in his early childhood was a pleasing, spirited-looking boy, with bright eyes, auburn hair, and fresh complexion. He remembered in after-years nothing distinctly earlier than this: That there used to be a Punch and Judy show which came at frequent intervals to perform just before our house, but for the delectation of our opposite neighbours, so that he himself only saw the back of the show. This was not at all what he wanted; so he motioned to go out into the street, and turn round and see the front of the Punch and Judy (there was no Dog Toby in those distant days), but was wofully disconcerted at being told that such a proceeding would be infra dig, and not to be condoned. Dante shared with Maria the ascendency over his two juniors: but Maria, in these opening years, was not easily to be superseded—being of a very enthusiastic temperament and lively parts; and indeed she always remained the best of the four at what we call acquired knowledge. In her fifth year she could read anything in either English or Italian, and read she did with tireless persistency. Our early years were passed wholly at home in London, with occasional visits to our grandparents at Holmer Green, our Aunts Margaret and Eliza, and our Uncle Philip, being continuously there as well. Our daily walks were with our mother in and about Regent’s Park, which was opened to the public much towards the date of my birth. I can still recollect how palatial I used to consider the frontage of the Terraces facing the Park, and how our mother would explain to us which of the columns or pilasters was Ionic, which Corinthian, and so on. The Colosseum, a big Exhibition building pulled down towards 1870, was then in existence, and was occasionally visited by us. It comprised a Camera Obscura, in which we viewed with wonder the groups of people disporting themselves….

Portrait of Christina Rossetti and Frances Polidori Rossetti, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1877

Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, later Rossetti, (27 April 1800 – 8 April 1886) is noted for her family connections rather than in her own right; in particular, two of her children were co-founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and another became a famous poet.

Polidori was the daughter of Italian exile Gaetano Polidori, and she was sister to John Polidori (Lord Byron’s physician), who wrote the original English vampire story, The Vampyre, in 1819.

Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti (28 February 1783, Vasto, Abruzzo – 24 April 1854) was an Italian poet and scholar who emigrated to England. He married Frances Polidori, daughter of another Italian exile Gaetano Polidori, and they had four children:

• Maria Francesca Rossetti
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• William Michael Rossetti
• Christina Georgina Rossetti
  

Casa Rossetti

Exiled in 1821, he fled first to Malta, where he stayed for three years, and then to England, where he lived until his death. There he wrote patriotic and liberal verse in Italian and a curious study attempting to show that Dante had written as spokesman for a vast, secret, ritualistic society opposed to tyranny. He was professor of Italian at King’s College, London, from 1831 until he retired in 1845. His long romantic poem Il veggente in solitudine [the seer in solitude] was published in 1846 and his autobiography in 1849.

Love's Greeting, oil on panel, circa 1861

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