Thank you Roger, Luis & Kathleen for lifting my somewhat dispirited feelings this morning. I have been admiring all the beauty here and blocked out the fact that I may have guests coming this evening.

Roger, a great forum thread indeed. I will have to come back and look closer, maybe bring a few of what I have on hand. Have to upload them and time is limited today. I want to just relax for a while before we have to put forth another tray of food. So, Gus is playing some difficult classical music after he so kindly cleaned up the kitchen for me. I can't tell you what he is playing - some of the names I cannot pronounce much less spell. He goes very the almost impossible to play ones. Guess he likes the challenge.

I, too, was struck with the orange hair on the lady and the magnificent plays of light over it.

Back later, have a great day!

Sara

Quote:

Hello Roger,

You are right, I indeed love it. But I don't know which one I love the most, whether The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo that you posted first or this Dante at Verona.

I regard The Enchanted Garden of Messer Ansaldo as perhaps better from an artistic point of view, but since I have a special liking for anything that smells of mystery - and indeed, there seems to be some mystery involved in the Dante at Verona, which I will tell you about only if you ask - I am not very sure whether or not I prefer it. Of course, I am assuming that the Dante in the picture is Dante Alighieri and not Dante Gabriel Rossetti, since the former is known to have stayed at Verona during his long exile (which included his staying at other famous Italian cities) which ended in his death away of his beloved Florence; on the other hand, Dante Alighieri seems to have been a cherissed subject, together with his love of Beatrice, for at least another Pre Raphaelite, as the beautiful painting below attests.

.

Dante and Beatrice by the Pre Raphaelist painter Henry Holiday,
which imagines the first meeting of Dante and his beloved Beatrice

.

Best Wishes,

Luis Miguel Goitizolo

Luis,

What I noticed was this.

Dante at Verona has an overall texture and dreamlike presence, including the background scenery, wheras in the Dante and Beatrice painting the background is more like a theatre set. This has the effect of concentrating attention upon the subjects and immediate background. Do you think this is deliberate and something he used frequently or was it just the way that he treated foregrounds?

Although in the Hickman the Dante face is almost feminine it bears a definite similarity to the Holiday one.

Roger

Roger,

You have a keen eye. It seems Mr Henry Holiday was a Pre Raphaelite but did not paint like one of them. They were supposed to abhor the post-Raphael painting, which already had a developed treatment of the perspective including more or less diffuminated backgrounds such as the one in Holiday's Dante and Beatrice. Instead, they favored a detailed painting of both foreground and background more in a romantic, dreamlike, medieval style.

However, Holiday did work as a stained glass window designer much in the style of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (see down below). But you have previously mentioned this.

Now as to my motives. Since the reference to Verona in the title of the Stillman painting might not be enough proof that it was indeed Dante Alighieri and not Dante Gabriel Rossetti the man in it, which I wanted to prove to you no less than myself, I made a search to know whether the great poet had been portrayed by some other Pre Raphaelite and Lo!, I found the Dante and Beatrice by Henry Holiday in a Wikipedia article in Spanish (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri).

You may take a look at more of his work here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Holiday, where he is included among the Pre Raphaelites even if he is not listed in the article dedicated to them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Raphaelite_Brotherhood). And he is mentioned as having been closely associated to Burne-Jones - a noted Pre Raphaelite himself - and having worked with him. Again, you have already mentioned this.

And here is a list of Pre Raphaelite paintings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pre-Raphaelite_paintings where he does not appear either.

Last but not least, here is a detail of a window by him.

.

Detail - Henry Holiday Window

.

As you see, I have tried to do my homework.

Best Wishes,

Miguel

That's all good info.

Did you see my earlier post here of English postage stamps which show these widows?

Roger

Yes Roger, I did and it is precisely there in your post that I first saw a reference to Henry Holiday, his work in stained glass windows and the fact that he worked with the Pre Raphaelite Burne-Jones.

Best Wishes,

Miguel