The Rossettis ed. by Carol Jacobi and James Finch (review)

Abstract

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Reviewed by:

• The Rossettised. by Carol Jacobi and James Finch
• Aisha Motlani (bio)

The Rossettis, Tate Britain, London, UK, 04 6to 09 24, 2023. Carol Jacobi and James Finch, eds., The Rossettis( London: Tate, 2023), pp. 239, £40 cloth.

Tate Britain's exhibition The Rossettisexplores the relationship between members of this family of artists and poets, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal, his fellow artist-poet, model, and later wife. One would expect that it would help dismantle the myth of the singular male artistic genius that scholars such as Deborah Cherry and Jan Marsh have worked so hard to upend. Despite these aims, however, the exhibition still feels like a one-man show.

Curated by Carol Jacobi, the exhibition is divided into nine sections that explore the historical, Romantic, and modern life subjects that occupied the Rossettis and their circle. The spotlight on Gabriel's painterly trajectory is established in room one, where the first object one encounters is his reimagining of the annunciation scene in Ecce Ancilla Domini!(1849–50). Mounted a few feet from the wall, its display lends it an off-kilter quality that was perhaps intended to magnify the unease exuded by the frightened figure of Mary in the painting, modelled by Christina Rossetti. On the walls are verses from Christina's poems, including "Who Shall Deliver Me" (1864) and "Cousin Kate" (1859). Sound recordings of these verses amplify the tension between the painting's virginal and sparse imagery and the themes of sexual predation and unrequited love explored in Christina's verses. Yet the painting's placement somewhat curtails the effect. The gap between painting and wall reinforces rather than challenges the idea of the solitary artistic genius. [End Page 503]

The working relationship between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Elizabeth Siddal is explored several rooms later in a section that examines poetic and visual representations of the Victorian fallen woman. Studies of Gabriel's unfinished painting Found(1854–55/1859–81) and verses from Christina's narrative poem "Goblin Market" (1862) are placed alongside an enlarged reproduction of Siddal's drawing Pippa Passes(1854). This drawing is based on Robert Browning's poem of the same name, which describes a silk worker in medieval Italy who walks through the streets of her town unscathed by evil and inspiring good. Opposite this is Gabriel's Bocca Baciata(1859), a painting of his model and mistress Fanny Cornforth as Alatiel, the sexually experienced heroine of Boccaccio's The Decameron. Jacobi's catalogue essay provides some important context for these curatorial choices. Jacobi points out Siddal's "socially ambiguous position" as a milliner and a professional model who lived with Gabriel out of wedlock for many years (97). Jacobi also highlights Christina's philanthropic work with prostitutes at St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary in Highgate. As Jacobi argues, all three Rossettis were preoccupied to some degree with the idea of the "woman undimmed by her lived sexual experience of a commodified struggle in a commercial world" (112). Regrettably, Jacobi does not explore the ideological ramifications of Gabriel's static portrayal of the Orientalized, sexually available Babylonian princess placed opposite the demure and active silk worker in Siddal's Pippa Passes.

Overall, the catalogue fares better than the exhibition in diffusing attention away from Gabriel and across the Rossetti clan, spotlighting aspects of their work with greater nuance than the exhibition format allows. Glenda Youde's discussion of Siddal's and Gabriel's drawings points to visual parallels between the medieval themes that occupied Siddal and Gabriel in the mid-1850s. She shows that "ideas appear to have bounced back and forth between the two artists as their idea took shape" (122). Youde joins Marsh in mythbusting conventional readings of Siddal's work as imitative of Gabriel's style, revealing instead that her ideas continued to have a profound and lasting impact on his work. After Siddal's death in 1862, he had her work photographed and collated in albums, presenting copies to his friends and likely keeping one for himself. This album, Youde argues, may have served as a continual fount of inspiration for the artist. Youde's careful comparison of their drawings reveals...