Tate Britain have again mounted an extensive interesting exhibition showcasing the work of a great artist. This time: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Tate exhibitions give plenty to see, more value for money than some other galleries. A great theme on display is the ambivalence and eventual rejection by Dante Gabriel of Christianity, in an age of Imperial Christendom.
We begin learning about the Rossetti family, with the poet Christina Rossetti featured alongside her older brother Dante Gabriel. DG soon takes centre stage, for this is an art, not a poetry, exhibition.
Mr Rossetti senior came to Britain from Italy. The contribution of these immigrants to fresh expressions of the English language and British art not highlighted, but is be celebrated.
Mr Rossetti senior was a scholar and translator of Dante. We are shown his work on Inferno, Hell, not on Purgatory and Paradise. Early works by Dante Gabriel feature demons and the devil, including scenes from Faust. His fascination with dark spirituality was probably prompted by the family attention to Dante’s Inferno. Originally named Gabriel Dante, he changed to Dante Gabriel. The angel messenger of God taking second place to the chronicler of the domain of the devil.
Dante’s Inferno has had a malign influence on Western Christendom. This book finally enshrined hell as the place where people, souls, burn in torment for ever, under the authority of the devil. Once inside, no escape is possible, for eternity. Jesus looks on from a great distance, unconcerned. Before Inferno, the popular depiction of hell was of a sharp-toothed grave from which Jesus rescues people, souls. This ‘Harrowing of Hell’ was shown in church pictures and in passion plays. After Inferno, the picture changed. See Changing the picture of hell: 23 August | Rogerharper’s Blog (wordpress.com)
The dominance of the Inferno picture of hell, suited the dominance of Imperial Christendom – the alliance between the Spirit of Jesus and the spirit of Empire. If Jesus was shown to rule by fear, fear of hell, Christendom could rule by fear. If Jesus was unconcerned with the masses in the miserable, tormented, pit of hell, Christendom could be unconcerned with the masses in the miserable exploited pits of Empire, slaves with no hope of escape. If Jesus had an eternal place for the devil and all his ways, Christendom could use at least some of the ways of the devil when it was deemed necessary, including torture. The doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment, finally enshrined and popularised by Dante, elevated the devil and his kingdom to an eternal partner with Jesus and His Kingdom. A malign influence indeed.
The paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti show him caught in the struggle between the Spirit of Jesus and the influence of the devil. He joined the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, renewing art through celebration of colour in nature and of the human Jesus, more Brother than Lord. The Pre-Raphaelites looked to art before Raphael, and to British Christendom before the British Empire.
Dante Gabriel did not fully embrace the ethos of the Brotherhood and later left it. He exchanged the vision of art communicating beauty and Christian truth for the vision of art for art’s sake, which, so often, means art as self-expression. ’Look at what I can do. Aren’t I clever? No-one else has thought of doing this before,’ seems the main message of many modern artists.
In the exhibition we see Dante Gabriel’s ‘Found’ pictures. The first drawing shows a shamed shrinking ‘fallen woman on a London Street as a good man from the village from which she ran away tries to draw her back home. DG never finished the picture. He painted the scene twice again, but with the ‘rescuing’ man both wealthier and more muscular. Is the woman shrinking from this man because his motives are not as pure as the first rescuer? The later paintings are also unfinished, indicating a tussle within the artist as well.
In the background of the Found paintings is a bound calf apparently on its way to market. The Exhibition Notes explain the tension in the scene between the hope of redemption and the despair of continuing degradation. These Notes indicate that the calf speaks of the despair. No mention of Jesus the Lamb of God, led, bound, to the slaughter cross, both the exposer of human wickedness and the redeemer of all humans through divine love and forgiveness. The people for whom DG panted would have known and understood the lamb-calf reference. The Art Expert who wrote the Notes seems to be oblivious. We have moved far away from a common Christendom culture.
‘The Woman Outside the House of Simon the Pharisee’ is a pivotal work. The Notes fail to explain the connection to the story in Luke 7, oblivious to Bible reference. People at the time knew that the Woman goes into the house, expressing great, sensuous, love for Jesus, who, in front of all, assures her of her forgiveness. The Pharisee, religious teacher and enforcer of the rules, is horrified.
Here the Woman, outside the house, locks eyes with Jesus, inside the house. Will she go in? The house is to the right, solid and dark. Simon the Pharisee scowls in the gloom. Jesus looks from a window, beams radiating from his face. He is also dark, grim.
The Woman is richly dressed, part of a great vibrant company. She and her companions are attractive, glorious, compared to the gloom of the Pharisee and Jesus in the dark house. Dante Gabriel is clearly attracted to the company of the Woman, ‘a notorious sinner,’ celebrating her and her life. Was he repelled by a dark Church housing both Jesus and The Pharisee, a Church of both divine compassion and of hypocritical exploitation? The Christendom in which he lived had elements of both.
From the drawing of this Woman onwards, Dante Gabriel, concentrated on his ideal, richly dressed, occasionally partly dressed, Woman. We read his sister’s poem observing that the paintings are different but the face is always the same. These paintings, without a vestige of Christian truth or morality, brought DG fortune. Both he, and his buyers, wanted only to look at feminine beauty fixed in an unageing, prime, age. Yet the one, repeated face, is expressionless, close to lifeless. A face which could be a user of laudanum, the opiate of the day, from which DG’s model, lover, later wife, died young of an overdose.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived in the Christendom tension between the seductions of the devil and the pure compassion of Jesus. He ended as a painter of escape from Christendom and also from reality, from the turmoil of all the emotions of this life and from the hope of redemption behind and beyond.
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