Woman's Art Inc.

Anna Jameson and D. G. Rossetti: His Use of Her Histories

Author(s): David A. Ludley
Source: Woman's Art Journal, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Autumn, 1991 - Winter, 1992), pp. 29-33
Published by: Woman's Art Inc.
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I ISUS ND NSGH S
hat the substantive influ-

ANNA

ence of Anna Jameson

(1794-1860) on Dante
Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82) has
not been recognized may be in
part due to John Ruskin, who

JAMESON

compared this rival writer on "old

art" to, among other things, his
father's uneducated serving girl.'
A century later, John Steegman
referred to Jameson as "rather a

compiler than a thinker, perhaps;...she was a woman of wide

experience and immense industry

in her field, whose labours still

bear fruit...[a] most important
link between old and new criti-

cism."' Jameson continues to be

reassessed, but nowhere has the

AND

D.G. ROSSETTI
His Use of Her Histories

more immediate, wide, and lasting influence."

Jameson's Memoirs was but

one of several books she wrote,
and Rossetti's strong interest is
evident in the marginalia found in

his copies.' For example, his

annotated copy of Jameson's

Sacred and Legendary Art (1848),

which he kept in his studio, documents Rossetti's rather intense
agreement with Jameson's disapproval of Rubens, albeit on a far

less aesthetic plane. Whenever

the name of Rubens appears in
Jameson's text, Rossetti wrote,

"Spit Here."8 In Jameson's

Commonplace Book of Thoughts,

influence of Jameson on Rossetti

By David A. Ludley

and the Pre-Raphaelite move-

Memories, and Fancies (1855),

Rossetti found further support

for his revulsion against Rubens, a

disaffection learned from Blake.

ment been significantly explored

or documented." That influence
was substantial, and it is demonstrable through an examination
of Rossetti's works alongside Jameson's texts.

Jameson conjures up a starkly contrasting vision of the "materialism" of Michelangelo versus that of Rubens:

In an 1853 letter to Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, Rossetti wrote of a "Dantesque sketch" on a theme he

In the first, the predominance ofform attains almost a moral sub-

employed often-Giotto painting the portrait of Dante; Rossetti

further noted, however, that this sketch was "treated quite differently from anything you have seen."4 This small pen-and-ink
sketch ("Study for Giotto Painting the Portrait of Dante" [1852];
Tate Gallery) depicts four male figures on a scaffolding; their
identities may be inferred from the passages quoted below the
composition-six lines of verse from Dante's Purgatorio, Canto
XI, lines 93-98, followed by two lines from a sonnet in Dante's
Vita Nuova:

limity. In the latter the predominance of flesh and blood is

debased into physical grossness.9

All Jameson lacked was a Pre-Raphaelite standard to bear. For

Rossetti, her appeal is evident.
Gerardine MacPherson, niece of Jameson and author of the
1878 Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, documents another

Rossetti-Jameson connection: both were close friends of

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. In fact, Jameson was

the Brownings' frequent traveling companion on their many

trips throughout Europe. In Pisa, where the trio spent a full

'Credete Cimabue nella pintura

Tenor lo campo; ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
Si che lafama di colui s'oscura.

three weeks, Jameson sketched from the masters the drawings

La gloria della linga; e forse e nato

with Millais and Hunt to form the Pre-Raphaelite

Cosi ha tulto l'uno all'altro Guido

Chi l'uno e l'altro cacciera di nido.'

Vede perfettamente agni salute

Chi la mia donna--tra le donne-rede.5

The first three lines expressed Dante's admiration for Giotto,

who "has the cry" and whose fame would "dim" even Cimabue's.

Significantly, these same three lines were used by Anna

Jameson, who was one of the 19th century's most widely read art
critics, to preface her discussion of Giotto in Memoirs of the

Early Italian Painters. Rossetti was quite familiar with this

study, which was originally published in 1845 in two volumes.
Jameson's consideration of Giotto well complements Rossetti's.
How he must have relished reading these lines:
Open any common history, not intended for the very profound,

and there we still find Cimabue "lording it over painting's

field," and placed at the head of a revolution in art, with which,

as an artist, he had little or nothing to do.... [Rather,] we owe
Giotto, than whom no single human being of whom we read has

exercised, in any particular department of science or art, a

that inspired Rossetti when he saw them reproduced in her

Sacred and Legendary Art. In August of 1848, Rossetti joined

Brotherhood-after poring over a book of Giovanni Paola

Lasinio's engravings after the fresco series at the Campo Santo

in Pisa.'o As her niece points out, Jameson paid special attention
to this "solemn enclosure of the Campo Santo," pursuing "her
study with the minutest care, continually pausing to point out
what was most admirable, to explain the sequence of art,...and
how the inspiration of a great master was repeated, sometimes in

broken lights, through his whole school."" For Jameson, and

later for Rossetti, the "great master" was the Florentine painter

Benozzo Gozzoli (1420-97).

Throughout the 19th and into the 20th century, most of the

Campo Santo frescoes (c. 1350s) were attributed to Gozzoli;

however, in 1933 Millard Meiss reattributed them to the Pisan

painter Francesco Traini (1321-63)." But, of course, what mattered most to the Pre-Raphaelites was the art itself, the "spirit"
of "early Christian" art, as this review of the Campo Santo frescoes in their house organ, The Germ, indicates:
A complete refutation of any charge that the character of [the
Early Italian] school was necessarily gloomy will be found in the
works of Benozzo Gozzoli, as in his "Vineyard" where there are

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some grape-gatherers the most elegant and

graceful imaginable; this painter's children
are the most natural ever painted."

For Rossetti and his brethren, the great

master who adheres "to the simplicity of
nature"" is, once again, Gozzoli.
Rossetti hosted dinners and other gath-

erings for the Brownings, inviting emi-

nature.'" Be that as it may, the scene's

implied sexuality distressed the

?? ;' |U*.:" , Y~r

,

?.

Victorians. Even Ruskin was taken aback

by Rossetti's conception, declaring that it

differed "from every, previous conception

, ? ??? ,iY

of the scene" knovwn to him.'

Si?i.

Yet this conception of the scene (lid

exist previously in Jameson's Sacred and
Legendary Art. Near the end of Part I"Of Angels and Archangels"--Jameson

nences such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, but

no critics. Although Tennyson influenced

discusses St. Gabriel. She describes every

nearly all the Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti

Annunciation depiction she can think of,

one of which closely matches Rossetti's:

enjoyed a closer personal relationship with

Browning. The quality Rossetti most

favored in Browning but found lacking in

Tennyson was an awareness of early Italian
art: "I found his knowledge of early Italian

The Virgin seated on the side of her bed

sinks back alarmed, almost fainting; the
angel in a robe...with a white tunic, stands

Art beyond that of anyone I ever met,encyclopaedically beyond that of Ruskin

himself."'" For a poet of Browning's ability

to possess an "encyclopaedic" knowledge

of such painters as Giotto and Fra Lippo

before her...with a proud commanding air.'"

Fig. 1. D. G. Rossetti, St. Cecilia (1856-57),

pen and brown ink, 37/8" x 31/4".

Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery.

Lippi was to invite immediate Pre-

the Chants Royales" in the Paris

the original, Jameson's vivid prose has deft-

he visited the sites, viewed the paintings, and absorbed the

ly sown the seed for Rossetti's conception.

Although Tennyson certainly influenced the Pre-Raphaelites'
subject matter and provided the "stuff' of Rossetti's dreams, it was

ambience of "old Italy" was, of course, Anna Jameson.

Sacred and Legendarn Art, however, was probably the source
through which Jameson exerted her most noteworthy influence

Jameson who helped them coalesce into a vision that would impart
a suitably medieval ambience. An example of this can be found in
Rossetti's illustrations after Tennyson's "The Palace of Art."

on Rossetti. This becomes obvious as early as 1850 in Ecce

Ancilla Dornini (The Annunciation) (Tate Gallery), Rossetti's
second completed oil painting. Both Rossetti and William

As critic Martin Meisel points out, Rossetti was happy to illustrate "The Palace of Art" because "it gave him the most 'imaginative freedom'" of any Tennyson subject.2 As Rossetti wrote
his friend William Allingham:

Holman Hunt had sketched from a cast of Ghiberti's north

doors at the Baptistery in Florence. Included on the doors is a

rather traditional portrayal of the Annunciation: Mary stands
under an arching portal representing the

Temple, with Gabriel approaching from

without. Having apparently been inter-

The other day Moxon called on me, wanting me to do some of the blocks for the new

rupted from her pious reading and meditation, the Virgin appears startled.
By contrast, in Ecce Ancilla Domini, the
Annunciate Virgin is portrayed at home,
sitting on a bed, in a well-appointed room.

Tennyson.... I have not begun even designing them yet, but fancy I shall try..."The
Palace of Art," etc.,-those where one can
allegorize on one's own hook on the subject
of the poem, without killing for oneself and
everyone, a distinct idea of the Tennyson.2'

Here, the angel is within and strides

from a dream-perhaps pious.

Rossetti's pubescent Mary appears dis-

identifying it as a "beautiful miniature from

Bibliothbque Nationale." Regardless of

Raphaelite sainthood. Browning's tutor as

toward the Virgin, who draws back, afraid.

This is most unusual. Lacking a holy book,
Rossetti's startled Virgin grasps only her
nightgown, for she has just been awakened

Jameson provides no illustration of this,

Nowhere is Rossetti's imaginative freedom

more evident than in his highly, creative

//

/ '

rendering of the "St. Cecily" stanza, a

description of one of the tapestries in "The

Palace of Art":

concertingly real for so sacrosanct a figure

and is, in fact, his sister Christina. The

Or in a clear-wall'd city on the sea,

Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept Saint Cecily;
An angel look'd at her.22

naturalistic depictions of the Holy Family

by Rossetti and his colleagues did not sit

well
contemporary
critics;
placing__
the with
Blessed
Annunciant
in aand
bed
was

unheard of, albeit logical. Rossetti's pen-

, -.,k ' "

indeed, she seems in ecstatic rapture, her

hands poised and ready) to transform the

cially since he even took away her "bed-

clothes"-an arrangement justified, in one

of his brother's journal entries, by the "hot
climate" of Nazareth and the Pre-

Raphaelite adherence to truth within

Rossetti's St. Cecilia (1856-57; Fig. 1), if

asleep, is a somnambulant dreamer;

chant for going off "on his own hook," as

he called it, created a critical uproar, espe-

attendant angel's whisperings into won-

Fig. 2. Anna Jameson, after Lucas van

Leyden, St. Cecilia (c. 1520). Munich Gallery.
From Sacred and Legendary Art (1848).

drous music for the earthbound creatures.

Jameson's influence is apparent in

Rossetti's depiction of St. Cecilia's distinc-

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lines issue forth."' Rossetti used

tive coiffure and "rapt expression";

in the organ, with its "quaint"

Jameson's pattern for his depiction

of the angel's mantle in which St.

medieval design; and in the angel,

with its evenly patterned costume.

1~

In Sacred and Legendary Art,

Jameson devotes more space to

"St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr"

i\

Cecilia is slowly being wrapped.

Once again, Jameson provided the

material; Rossetti, the imagination.

Rossetti's reliance on

Jameson's recast medievalism is

than to any other "Latin Martyr,"

still evident in The Bower

and her copy of Lucas van

Leyden's St. Cecilia (Fig. 2), is

reproduced on page 351. In the

Meadow (1872; Manchester City

abb

Art Gallery). By examining studies for this work, we find its gene-

text Jameson describes her as

"magnificently attired" with "her

hair bound with a small jewelled

turban." As in the van Leyden

Fig. 3. Anna Jameson, after Liberale da Verona, Laus Deo

(c. 1470). From Sacred and Legendary Art (1848).

copy, Rossetti gave his St. Cecilia very long, wavy hair with a

curious bunching effect at the top of the head that carries a

shape identical to that of van Leyden's St. Cecilia. However,
upon reading Tennyson's poem, we realize that Rossetti's depiction is to be read as hair "wound with white roses" rather than
with any small bejeweled "turban"; nevertheless, the similarity of
effect in the two illustrations is striking.

Further, Jameson emphasizes here, as earlier in the text, St.

Cecilia's "rapt expression" as she plays the organ."2 Tennyson, on

sis, once again, in Jameson's

Sacred and Legendary Art. Just

above the introduction is an illus-

tration entitled "Laus Deo" (Fig. 3), a woodcut after a detail

from Liberale da Verona's Laus Deo; Liberale (1455-1529) was
of the Early Italian School that both Jameson and the PreRaphaelites revered. In this engraving after a Jameson sketch
are three winged angels, two of whom sing and play stringed
instruments. The center angel may have been singing, but she
stands now in peaceful reverie, her lips together, as she gazes
down at the sheet of music in her hand. All three have elongated necks and tilt their heads in a "Botticellian" manner.

the other hand, places her only "near" the organ-not on the
wall but somewhere "in" the "wall'd city," where she "slept."
Rossetti has conceived a most odd sleep for his saint: she is

In Rossetti's earliest study for The Bower Meadow (Fig. 4),

there are also three figures, two of whom, however, have no
wings-a loss suffered by Gabriel in Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla

depicted as if playing the organ while "rapt," within a trance-a

transcendent breakthrough to the spirit world hovering at her
shoulder. This conception is more closely attuned to Jameson's
text than to Tennyson's poem. Indeed, Tennyson was said to be

Domini as well. The center figure remains a winged angel; as with

Jameson's sketch, the two outside figures sing and play stringed
instruments. Rossetti has changed the instrument on the left figure to a zither; yet, interestingly, the player's arms and hands
remain in positions nearly identical to those of the corresponding
figure in Jameson's "Laus Deo." In each, the figure on the right
plays a lute and the center angel stands peacefully attendant, hold-

a "good deal puzzled" by Rossetti's St. Cecilia." Perhaps he had

not read Jameson.

Jameson had read Tennyson, however. It is interesting to

note, two pages later, Jameson's reference to Tennyson's poem
as the only "picture of St. Cecilia sleeping." She continues, lightly chastising the poet for his binding of St. Cecilia's hair with
white roses:
Very Charming!-but the roses brought from paradise should be
red and white, symbolical of love and purity, for in paradise the
two are inseparable, and purity without love as impossible as love

ing a holy messenger in Rossetti's study-a dove-rather than a

holy message of music. Rossetti gives his musicians robes with

voluminous folds-drapery as full and cut at the bodice in the

same manner as in the Jameson. Only in the manner in which the
sleeves of Jameson's angels are gathered half-way between shoulder and elbow is there an appreciable difference.
Lastly, Rossetti parallels Jameson's distinctive "Botticellian"
tilt with the heads of his figures. Further, the postures, body

positions, and profiles of each figure in Rossetti's study all

reflect the way Jameson (or Liberale)

without purity.z"

depicted her own angels. Indeed,

In Jameson, too, we find a small version

of the medieval organ. (In mystical circles

Rossetti's lute player seems to have been

lifted directly from Jameson's work. It is

St. Cecilia is credited with inventing the

organ, "consecrating it to the service of
God."'"2) In Jameson's drawing after van
Leyden, St. Cecilia plays the instrument
with her right hand while pumping the

clear from Rossetti's undated pastel

study (in the Fitzwilliam Museum), that

The Bower Meadow underwent various

stylistic changes before its final manifes-

bellows with her left. In Rossetti's version

the organ is too large for such acrobatics,

so his bellows hang idle at the back of the

tation. However, Jameson remains the

initial source.

ooX

instrument. With the organ, therefore,

Rossetti has definitely gone off "on his own

hook," although he retains Jameson's

kv

essential components.

Finally, perhaps the most telling evi-

dence of influence is on the outermost

mantle of the saint's cloak, where Jameson

has placed an even pattern of starburststiny circles around which short, straight

Perhaps the most significant evidence

of Jameson's influence on Rossetti can be
found in one of his illustrations

(c. 1861) after the early Italian poets,

which are now part of the Janet Camp
Troxell Rossetti Collection, Princeton
University Library. Within this collection

Fig. 4. D. G. Rossetti, "Study for The Bower

Meadow" (c. 1871-72), pen and brown ink,

41/21" x 35/8". Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

is the only copy of Rossetti's The Early

Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to

Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) with his

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ed to her. Surtees, however, did not

original drawings illustrating the verses of

six of the poets. Rossetti intended these

pause to speculate on the source of such

illustrations to grace the entire first edition,

but his publisher refused, claiming that the
cost of reproduction would be higher than
profits would allow. Therefore, the Troxell
copy is the sole illustrated example.
One of the most striking of these illustra-

teristic of Rossetti's style is that he appropriated the design from the last page of

uniqueness.
The reason this angel is so uncharac-

Jameson's commentary on "The Twelve

Apostles" in Sacred and Legendary Art

t/

tions is the one Rossetti designed for the

"Cantica" of St. Francis of Assisi. The

!. ,

"Cantica" comes very early in Rossetti's vol-

ume, near the beginning of "Part I: Poets

Chiefly before Dante." Rossetti tells us
that the "Cantica" is derived from a long
poem "on Divine Love, half ecstatic, half
scholastic, and hardly appreciable now."
Even so, he points out that the passage

(Fig. 6). The angel swinging a censer is a

detail that Jameson copied from Diirer's

elaborate woodcut, The Birth of Mary

(1503-04; Kupferstich Kabinett SMPK,
Berlin), one of 17 from a cycle based on

the life of the Virgin. Jameson's copy

Fig. 5. D. G. Rossetti, "'Cantica' of St. Francis
of Assisi" (1861). From The Early Italian
Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri
(1 100-1200-1300). Troxell Rossetti Collection,

"stands well by itself, and is the only one

Princeton University Library.

spoken by our Lord."" Rossetti translated

Saint Francis's "Cantica" as follows:

focuses on the angel at the top of Diirer's

woodcut, eliminating the remainder of

the scene and altering, in subtle ways,
various details from the original. That

Rossetti took his conception from

Jameson and not the original is clear from

his duplication of Jameson's distinctive alterations; needless to
say, it is also indicated by Rossetti's zeroing in on the same part
of Diirer's woodcut.

Set Love in order, thou that lovest Me.

Never was virtue out of order found;
And though Ifill thy heart desirously,
By thine own virtue I must keep My ground:
When to My love thou dost bring charity,
Even she must come with order girt and gown'd.

Jameson's most conspicuous alteration of the Diirer is the

angel's hair. While the hair of Diirer's angel flies out and
upward in masses almost baroque in their complexity of curl,
Jameson's angel is more conservatively coiffed-a more closely
shorn, wavy coiffure that follows the shape of the head. The
hairstyle of Rossetti's angel, while straighter than the others,
nevertheless resembles Jameson's version. In fact, the outline of
the hair so closely parallels Jameson's depiction that it may even
have been a tracing, with Rossetti only filling in a different hair
texture. Also, Rossetti's ethereal angel is a far cry from the fullcheeked Valkyrie of Diirer's woodcut. With its lovely eyes and
nose, tender mouth and shallow cheeks, Rossetti's angel shows
its debt to Jameson, not Diirer.
Another telling difference is apparent in the swinging censer.
Diirer depicts the angel holding a ring from which a measure of

Look how the trees are bound

To order, bearing fruit;

And by one thing compute,
In all things earthly, order's grace or gain.
All earthly things I had the making of
Were number'd and were measured then by Me;
And each was order'd to its end by Love,
Each kept, through order, clean for ministry.
Charity most of all, when known enough,
Is of her very nature orderly.
Lo, now! what heat in thee,
Soul, can have bred this rout?
Thou putt'st all order out.

chain-link travels at least as far as the angel's other hand.

Jameson, on the other hand, shows the angel holding a ring on

which a knot is tied and from which a long cord or thong passes

Even this love's heat must be its curb and rein."

to and beyond the right hand to the censer. Again, Rossetti

duplicates Jameson's change.
Finally, in the Diirer woodcut, the angel's right wing contains

Rossetti's illustration (Fig. 5) appears on the second of the two

pages allotted this poem, just

ten outermost or "profile"

drawing of an angel swinging a

censer, her wings outspread, as

feathers, while the corresponding wing in Jameson's drawing

contains only nine. Rossetti, of

beneath the last six lines. It is a

she gazes down from on high.

Rossetti scholar Virginia

course, depicts nine as well.:'

Although Rossetti's is a some-

-,- , .-. . .

Surtees reproduced these draw-

what simplified version of

Princeton's Library Chronicle.

Jameson's drawing, the only significant difference between the

two is his elimination of the

ings in a brief article for

Near the end of her commentary

she notes the uniqueness of

Rossetti's angel: Of the numerous depictions of angelic figures

by Rossetti, this is the only one

that does not contain "distinctive

or familiar features" such as the

"characteristically drooping lids

of his wife Elizabeth Siddal,""30
even though the book is dedicat-

y "7vK??-

cloud of incense streaming

\ i,..,-

"N

".-

..?"

Fig. 6. Anna Jameson, detail after Albrecht Durer, The Birth of

Mary (c. 1503-04). Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,

Berlin. From Sacred and Legendary Art (1848).

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from the censer.

In light of the above, it

seems that Surtees errs in

describing Rossetti's angel as

being "borne upon billowing

clouds."'32 Since Rossetti's illus-

tration does not appropriate

even the streaming cloud of

incense from the works by Jameson and Diirer, Surtees must be

referring to the lower, billowing mass of the angel's garment.
Not having the benefit of the more detailed source of this work,
Surtees has mistaken the voluminous shapes of the lower robe
for clouds.

If Ruskin had known the extent to which Rossetti depended

on Jameson, he might well have been appalled. For Ruskin possessed a volatile, competitive intellect; his demeanor was not that
of a humble man, nor were his opinions markedly fair. So, when
he heard that Jameson was encroaching on his territory-"writ-

ing something about old art"-Ruskin wrote his father that

Jameson knew "as much about art as the cat" and compared her
to his father's uneducated servant."

Ruskin's letters, particularly those to Rossetti, reveal the critic to

be hypersensitive and not immune to petty jealousies. Rossetti, in

turn, once wrote: "I do not call John Ruskin's work criticism, but
rather brilliant poetic rhapsody."" Nevertheless, both Ruskin and
Jameson provided key inspiration for Rossetti's art.

Anna Jameson's importance as an interpreter of "old art" to

her contemporaries has been acknowledged. The specific influence she had on Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites has now been

established. From MacPherson's Memoirs we learn that

7. Quentin Bell, "The Pre-Raphaelites and their Critics," in Leslie

Parris, ed., Pre- Raphaelite Papers (London: Tate Gallery, 1984), 11.
8. Ibid.

9. Anna Jameson, A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and

Fancies (New York: D. Appleton, 1855), 289.
10. Lasinio's folio of engravings, "after the frescoes by Giotto, Benozzo
Gozzoli, Orcagna and others," was published in Florence in 1832.
11. Gerardine MacPherson, Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, with a
Portrait (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1878), 233.

12. Millard Meiss, "The Problem of Francesco Traini," Art Bulletin

(June 1933), 97.

13. William Michael Rossetti, ed., The Germ: Thoughts Towards Nature
in Poetry, Literature and Art, II (February 1850), 61-62.
14. Ibid., back cover.

15. Rossetti to William Allingham, November 25, 1855, from Doughty

and Wahl, Letters, I, 280.

16. William Michael Rossetti, November 25, 1849, entry, "The P. R. B.

Journal, 1849-53," in Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters (London: Hurst
and Blackett, 1900; reprint, New York: A.M.S. Press, 1974), 235.

17. William Sharp, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study

(London, 1882; reprint, New York: A.M.S. Press, 1970), 130-31.

18. Anna Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art (London: Longman,

Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1850; first published in 1848 in two vols.), 75.
19. Ibid.

Jameson spent the last few months of her life, late in 1859, in the
Print Room of the British Museum.5 Since the Print Room at
that time was also Rossetti's perennial haunt, it is easy to imagine
them nodding cordially to one another as they perused reproductions after the early Italian masters.*

University of California, 1977), 338.

NOTES

21. Rossetti to Allingham, January 23, 1855, from Doughty and Wahl,
Letters, I, 239.

This study is based, in part, on my doctoral dissertation for Emory

20. Martin Meisel, "Half Sick of Shadows," in U. C. Knoepflmacher and

G. B. Tennyson, eds., Nature and the Victorian Imagination (Berkeley:

22. Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Palace of Art," lines 97-100, in Walter

University. Further research was supported by Katharine Bleckley Scholar

E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange, eds., Victorian Poetry and Poetics

awards from the English-Speaking Union, Atlanta.

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968), 22.

1. Ruskin to his father, September 28, 1845, in Harold I. Shapiro, ed.,

Ruskin in Italy: Letters to His Parents 1845 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 215.

2. John Steegman, Consort of Taste, 1830-1870 (London: Sidgwick and

Jackson, 1950), 187. For more recent considerations of Jameson, see Clara
Thomas, "Anna Jameson: Art Historian and Critic," WAJ (S/S 1980), 20-22,

and Adele Holcomb, "Anna Jameson on Women Artists," WAJ (F 1987/W

1988), 15-23.
3. In "Dante Rossetti's Beata Beatrix and the New Life," Art Bulletin

23. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 345, 351.

24. H. C. Marillier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: George Bell,

1899), 75.
25. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, 353.

26. Ibid., 345.

27. As Johnson notes in "Dante Rossetti's Beata Beatrix," the Dalziel
brothers engraved for both Rossetti and Jameson. This could suggest that
the engravers, perhaps Edward Dalziel, were responsible for the two works'

(October 1975), 549, a link between Rossetti and Jameson is noted by

shared details-the starburst pattern, for example. However, Rossetti's

Ronald W. Johnson, the only other author to do so. Johnson notes that the

original drawing contains this pattern as well as other common elements, so

Dalziel brothers, who made the engravings for Rossetti's St. Cecilia, also

it is obvious that the appropriations were Rossetti's and not the Dalziels'.

engraved for Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. However, my analysis is

28. D. G. Rossetti, trans., The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo
to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200-1300) (London: Smith, Elder, 1861), 17.

based on Rossetti's original drawing (Fig. 1) and not on the engraved version, which differs slightly from the original.

4. Rossetti to Woolner, January 1, 1853, from Oswald Doughty and J.

R. Wahl, eds., Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I (Oxford: Oxford

29. Ibid., 17-18.

30. Virginia Surtees, "The Early Italian Poets by D. G. Rossetti with His
Illustrations," Princeton University Library Chronicle (Spring 1972), 230-32.

31. In "Early German Sources for Pre-Raphaelite Designs," Art

University, 1965), 123.

5. Rossetti apparently turned to the Rev. H. F. Cary's bilingual edition

of The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri (London,

1845). Here is Cary's translation:

Quarterly (Spring/Summer 1973), 56, John Christian discusses Diirer's

influence on Rossetti. He, too, discovered the sketch resembling Diirer's
"censing angel" in the Troxell collection's copy of Rossetti's Early Italian
Poets (58-59). However, he makes no mention of Jameson's work.

32. Surtees, "Early Italian Poets," 231.

...Cimabue thought
To lord it over painting's field; and now
The cry is Giotto's, and from his name eclipsed.
Thus hath one Guido from the other snatch'd

The letter'd prize: and he, perhaps, is born,

Who shall drive either from their nest.

(Cary, Purgatory XI, lines 94-99).

6. Anna Jameson, Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters (Cambridge,
Eng.: Riverside Press, n.d.; orig. pub. in 1845), 25.

33. Ruskin to his father, September 28, 1845, from Shapiro, Ruskin in
Italy, 215-16.

34. Rossetti to Ford Madox Brown, January 19, 1873, from George
Birkbeth Hill, ed., Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham
1854-1870 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897), 271-72.

35. MacPherson, Memoirs, 305-06.

David A. Ludley is Associate Professor of English and Art at

Clayton State College, Morrow, Georgia.

WOMAN'S ART JOURNAL FALL 1991/WINTER 1992

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