One day when Rossetti was painting in his studio, Deverell, a fellow
artist, rushed in and exclaimed that he had found the ideal woman. She
was working in a milliner’s shop, he said; but she was a wonderful girl
of stately dignity, with blue-green eyes and coppery tinted hair. This
girl was Elizabeth Siddal, and from that time on she was the model for
Rossetti’s mystical dreams in color. She later became his wife.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in England in 1828, the son of an
Italian refugee. His parents lived simply, almost in poverty, but
with refinement suited to the fostering of art and poetry in their
children. The mother believed that one good picture on a plain wall
was more beautiful than many worthless decorations. Rossetti used this
simplicity in his paintings. He and a number of other artists formed
the Preraphaelite Brotherhood. This was an organization that took a
love of simplicity as its motto, and believed in using simplicity in
everything.
Besides being an artist of great genius, Rossetti was a poet. He and
his sister Christina were the leaders in the Preraphaelite movement in
poetry. Before he was nineteen he wrote “The Blessed Damozel,” a poem
that expressed his ideal in womanhood. Elizabeth Siddal proved to be
his ideal woman. Ruskin spoke of her as a “noble, glorious creature.”
Later the artist painted a picture to go with the poem, and his model
was Elizabeth Siddal.
When Rossetti first asked her to pose for him the ideal beauty thought
that he wanted her for fashion plates. She little thought that she was
to be made the object of a great artist’s lifework.
Her death plunged Rossetti into lifelong misery, almost insanity. Up to
the moment of his own death in 1882 he never ceased to grieve for her.
“Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even.”
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1, NO. 28, SERIAL NO. 28