Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Photo Print

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Proserpine, 1874. Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (1828-1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. In his Proserpine, the artist illustrates in his typical Pre-Raphaelite style the Greek goddess Proserpina who lives in the underworld during Winter. She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand. As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the sight of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it, immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as the attribute of a goddess. The ivy branch in the background may be taken as a symbol of clinging memory.