Beata Beatrix
About the painting
Both a poet and a painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a circle of Victorian artists who were united in their regard for medieval aesthetics. Named after the thirteenth-century poet Dante Alighieri, Rossetti found inspiration for Beata Beatrix in his namesake’s La vita nuova (The New Life; 1295). Rossetti’s scene draws a parallel between Dante’s love for the late Beatrice and his own affection for his recently deceased wife and muse, Elizabeth Siddal. While this picture is a tribute to Siddal, Rossetti was adamant that it does not represent her death. Rather, the work portrays her as if in a trance or altered spiritual state.
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Rossetti’s symbolism combines details from his personal life with those from La Vita Nuova. “The Dove” was the artist’s nickname for Siddal, and a haloed dove delivers her a white poppy, a symbol of laudanum—a derivative of opium—which caused her death by overdose. Above rises the Ponte Vecchio, the Florentine bridge that served as the setting of Dante’s poem. To the upper left is the personification of Love and to the right the figure of Dante, who doubles as a representation of Rossetti himself. The sundial shadows the number nine, the age Dante first saw Beatrice as well as the hour and day of her death. Rossetti designed the frame, and at the top right he inscribed, “How doth the city sit solitary.” This quote from La Vita Nuova refers to the city of Florence’s mourning of Beatrice.
Given the deeply personal nature of the work, Rossetti initially refused his patron William Graham’s request to create a replica, although he eventually yielded. The Art Institute’s painting is this second version, which is the only one to have a predella—the painted scene at the bottom of the frame—depicting Beatrice and Dante’s reunion in paradise. With this addition, Rossetti provides the medieval love story with a happy conclusion, perhaps suggesting that he, too, had begun to come to terms with his own profound grief.
Meanwhile, in the life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The whole life1869
Poems from the grave: the exhumation
Prevailed upon by friends, in particular Charles Augustus Howell, Rossetti in 1869 had his poems exhumed from his wife’s grave in order to collate and publish them.
1869–1874
Kelmscott Manor: a summer house and a retreat
In 1869 Morris and Rossetti rented Kelmscott Manor at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, as a summer home, but it became a retreat for Rossetti and Jane Morris: they spent summers there with the Morrises’ children while William Morris travelled to Iceland in 1871 and 1873.
1870
The 1870 “Poems”
In 1870 Rossetti published the volume “Poems by D. G. Rossetti,” collating the recovered texts and some translations, such as his 1869 “Ballad of Dead Ladies” after Villon; the word “yesteryear” is credited to Rossetti as a neologism used for the first time in this translation.
1871
Love for Jane Morris
In 1871 Rossetti fell in love again — with Jane, the wife of his friend William Morris; they became lovers, and Jane sat for him often.
October 1871 – May 1872
Buchanan’s attack: the “fleshly school of poetry”
In October 1871 Robert Buchanan attacked both Rossetti’s poems and his morality in The Contemporary Review; against the advice of his brother William Michael, Rossetti issued a written reply in December, and in May 1872 Buchanan published a 100-page pamphlet, “The Fleshly School of Poetry and Other Phenomena of the Day.”
