Upon their return, they explained that the young man had set sail quickly for a foreign country because of some pressing need. Isabel asked them if he would return soon, but got no reply, and they deceived her every day with new stories. Finally, she had a dream that revealed the truth to her. In it appeared Lorenzo, who said to her: “Isabel, my sweet! Red whortleberries droop above my head, and a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet; Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed their leaves and prickly nuts.” When morning came, she ran to the forest with her old nurse. Her eyes fell upon the knife that had been used in the murder. The two women dug and dug, and found the corpse. Then, the distraught lover, wanting to keep something of the dead man at any price, cut off his head and carried it back home with her. There she embalmed it and hid it in a flowerpot, under a basil plant that was kept green by her endless tears. From then on, she neglected everything and cared only for her beloved basil. Day and night, she cried over the plant, which grew and flowered wondrously. This astonished her brothers, who looked to see what was under the basil, and though “the thing was vile with green and livid spot,” they recognised Lorenzo’s head. Appalled, they fled their homeland, carrying away what remained of their victim. But as soon as she no longer had her beloved plant, Isabel fell ill and wasted away. And finally she died, mournfully asking everyone else who approached her and pilgrims returning from faraway lands, what had become of her basil-pot.
Edward Burne-Jones,
The Challenge in the Desert, 1894-1898.
Oil on canvas, 129.5 x 96.5 cm.
Collection Lord Lloyd-Webber.
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale,
The Wise Virgins, 1901.
Two watercolours on one canvas, upper paneclass="underline"
37 x 30 cm; lower paneclass="underline" 11 x 30 cm.
Christopher Wood Gallery, London.
This was the drama from which each of the Pre-Raphaelites was expected to depict a scene, rigorously applying the theories of their new schooclass="underline" no imitation of the masters, no generalisation, each figure reproduced from a model and from one single model, outlines as original and individual as possible, painting on an unprepared white canvas, and fastidious attention to detail. In a word, earnestness. But, while Rossetti continued talking away and Hunt prepared by meticulously studying every detail of his subject, Millais had already constructed, sketched out, and finished his painting. For the Exhibition of 1849, in which all three of them participated together, only Millais produced a work inspired by Keats.[12]
This work depicts Isabella and Lorenzo seated together at the table, where he is offering her half an orange on a plate. Across from them, on the other side of the table, the two brothers, one cracking a nut and the other lifting his glass to his lips, cast suspicious glances toward the couple. The closest one reaches out to kick Isabella’s hound, and this forces the poor beast to cower against the knees of its mistress. Most of the guests in Lorenzo and Isabella are eating or drinking, without paying any attention to one another. It looks as though this is a table at an inn. If lovers were able to notice anything apart from each other, Isabella and Lorenzo would have seen the salt cellar overturned on the table, a sinister omen! Behind them, an attentive servant stands with his towel draped over his arm, watching over their banquet. The costumes are those of Florence around the fourteenth century. Hunt declared that this was the most astonishing painting by a twenty- year-old youth that that the world had ever seen, and perhaps he was right. In it, the theories of their school had been scrupulously followed, though by chance. Each figure was painted after a model, and after a single model. Every fold, every wrinkle in the fabric had been reproduced by observing nature. Each vein of the hands, each reflection on a fingernail, and each gleam of light had been copied from reality, “neglecting nothing, selecting nothing”. Thus, each character was a portrait: Isabella that of Mrs Hodgkinson, the wife of Millais’ half-brother, and Lorenzo that of William Rossetti, who had quite an Italian appearance. The brother who is about to drink is a portrait of Dante Rossetti, and the old invitee who is wiping his lips with a serviette is that of William Bell Scott, a great friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, a mediocre poet, and a poor painter. He left one painting (The Eve of the Deluge in the National Gallery), some etchings, and two volumes of his memoirs. He was an eclectic character, and his persistence in wanting to convert minds as resistant as those of Hunt and Rossetti to materialism was amusing.
At the same time, Hunt exhibited Rienzi swearing Revenge over his Brother’s Corpse. A fight had just taken place between several nobles over the division of Rome. We see the young Rienzi dead, stretched out on a shield, and his eldest brother is raising his fist to the sky. It is again Dante Rossetti who posed for this figure. As for the landscape, it was painted after nature, which almost never happened at the time for the backgrounds of historic paintings. The third P.R.B., Rossetti, exhibited a painting depicting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, not at the Academy, but at the Chinese Gallery in Hyde Park where his master, Madox Brown, had also sent his famous painting of Cordelia’s Portion, a scene taken from King Lear. Thus, in the spring of 1849 the three P.R.B. and the man who inspired them made their first collective attempt at a new art.
Edward Burne-Jones,
Laus Veneris, 1878.
Oil on canvas, 122.5 x 183.3 cm.
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
John Melhuish Strudwick,
The Gentle Music of a Bygone Day, 1890.
Oil on canvas, 79 x 61 cm.
The Pre-Raphaelite Trust.
John Melhuish Strudwick,
Isabelle and the Pot of Basil.
The De Morgan Centre, London.
Edward Burne-Jones,
The Beguiling of Merlin, 1873-1874.
Oil on canvas, 186 x 111 cm.
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
At first, everything went very well. The paintings by Hunt and Millais were hung in prominent places, and the painters were congratulated by many of the people in attendance on the morning of the private view. Their realism did not shock the audience at all, The Times was benevolent, and the professors of the Royal Academy were moderate in their criticism. No one had noticed the mysterious letters P.R.B on Isabel’s chair, a visible sign of the conspiracy. The Pre-Raphaelites even immediately found buyers, which is a sign of predestination in England as it is elsewhere, or perhaps more so than abroad. They prepared for the exhibition of 1850, and after a short trip to France, galvanised by their success, they created a magazine called Germ, in which the Pre-Raphaelite thesis was presented and developed, revealing the meaning of the letters P.R.B. The friends of these innovators gave, in each issue of Germ, published from January to April of 1850, the secret of their preferences, their antipathies and their ambitions. This revelation caused a sudden turn of events. The idea that the Pre-Raphaelites wanted to change something in the aesthetic constitution of their country deeply upset the same people that their works had not shocked at all. English conservativism let out a cry of terror. It seems that Raphael had become, like Nelson or Wellington, something unquestionable, and that declaring oneself to be “Pre-Raphaelite” was considered a menace to the security of the British homeland. These events coincided with the 1850 Exhibition, where Millais presented his Christ in the House of his Parents, Hunt The Missionary, and Rossetti The Annunciation.[13] The entire press thundered against them. The great Charles Dickens himself entered the arena and wrote a vigorous diatribe against Millais’ painting, which depicted the baby Jesus in his father’s workshop. Jesus has just hurt himself with some pliers, and the kneeling Virgin is embracing and consoling him; Saint Joseph is holding his hand. A young Saint John the Baptist is bringing water to dress his wound. Saint Anne is removing the pliers, which are still on the table. An apprentice is adjusting a plank, continuing his work uninterrupted. Here was a new and curiously realistic expression of the dreadful prophecy: “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.” Dickens wrote: “As you approach the Holy Family of Millais, you must drive out of your head any religious conception, any elevated thought, any connection with the tender, dramatic, sad, noble, sacred, dear, and beautiful, and prepare to lower yourself to the bottom of all this, horrible, shameful, repulsive, and infuriating.”[14] The P.R.B. could not even plead against this terrible verdict with an article in The Germ, which had been defunct since April for lack of funds.