The erotic pull of death in Pre-Raphaelite art
A slightly dark, definitely heretical, look at what really entices us about those paintings
“Nor is love the desire to lose but the desire to live in fear of possible loss, with the beloved holding the lover on the very threshold of a swoon.”
I’m sure that you have seen at least one work from the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Was it Ophelia by Millais? Her lips parted and fingers trailing flower petals through a brook? Or was it Lady Lilith by Rossetti (pictured above)? With her burnished hair held aloft like an ancient trophy?
What is it that makes us return to certain paintings again and again? Why are we still so intoxicated with the work of the Pre-Raphaelites today, 177 years after the founding of the Brotherhood?
In this essay I will argue that the mystical pull of Pre-Raphaelite art lies in its fusion of eroticism and death, and that central to this fusion is the figure of the Pre-Raphaelite Muse.
Who were the Pre-Raphaelites?
I have always been inexplicably drawn to the paintings of Millais and Rossetti, of Waterhouse and De Morgan, and my obsession is well-fed here.
, writer of has a lovely publication dedicated to the Pre-Raphaelites, called , while of recently published a wonderful essay launching a series on the movement.In 1848, whilst a red mist of anti-monarchical revolutions threaded across Europe and industrialization was rapidly changing the landscape of human life, three1 British artists decided to start a secret society. *because of course*
These three visionaries — Dante Gabriel Rosetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt — shunned the conventions of contemporary Academic painting, which strove to “systemize the teaching of art.” They instead “wished to return to the styles that preceded Raphael (hence, Pre-Raphaelite), and found inspiration in medieval and early Renaissance artists” (
2).
The Brotherhood was dedicated to aestheticized realism, rather than gritty industrialized realism. They urged a return to the jewel-toned palettes, rich symbolism, and textured storytelling of medieval and early Renaissance art.
The Pre-Raphaelite “Muse”
Today, we know the Pre-Raphaelites for their sordid personal history as much as for their art. Rossetti was a serial adulterer and drug addict who married his muse and pupil, Lizzie Siddal. William Morris, a contemporary and friend of Rossetti, married his muse, Jane Morris. But Jane was also Rossetti’s muse, and the two would carry on a volatile affair until Rossetti’s death in 1882. *There should really be more movies made about this crew*
The keystone of the Pre-Raphaelite movement was their blending of artistic mediums, drawing from literature and myths for their paintings. In the same way, they often blended their personal lives with their art.
Eroticism and Death
The pull of a viewer to a work of art is an erotic one. It is taut with desire and longing. For the most famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings, this erotic pull is heightened by a concurrent desire: the desire for Death.
French philosopher, *of course it would be the French* Georges Bataille, writes that “in essence, love raises the feeling of one being for another to such a pitch that the threatened loss of the beloved or the loss of his love is felt no less keenly than the threat of death. Hence love is based on a desire to live in anguish in the presence of an object of such high worth that the heart cannot bear to contemplate losing it. The fever of the senses is not a desire to die. Nor is love the desire to lose but the desire to live in fear of possible loss, with the beloved holding the lover on the very threshold of a swoon. At that price alone can we feel the violence of rapture before the beloved.”
According to Bataille, love and desire are inseparable from notions of death and loss. Our ideas of love are predicated on the ever-present fear of its ending. This tension forms the essence of eroticism.
Sensual Death in Pre-Raphaelite Art
To illustrate this point — that eroticism is married to death — let’s take a look at some of the Pre-Raphaelites’ most revered works.
Ophelia, John Everett Millais, 1851-52
Ophelia floats in a brook, just at the point of death. She has fallen (by accident, or design) into the water, maddened by the betrayal of her beloved Hamlet.
Everything about this painting suggests verdant life and fertile earth. The lush green landscape, the blooming flowers (symbols of female sexuality), draw us in with their bright fecundity. All this saturated life makes the half-dead girl luminous. Her parted lips awaiting a kiss, her pale cheeks marked with a soft spray of rose, her open hands, her floating skirts, all these details make her vividly physical. She shines brighter than any full-living woman could, for life is at its most potent when it sits across the table from death.
The poignancy of this painting is heightened by the knowledge that Millais’ model, the infamous Lizzie Siddal, nearly died from pneumonia after posing for the painting for hours…submerged in a bathtub…in the middle of a London winter.
Beata Beatrix, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1864-70
Ophelia eventually cost Lizzie her life. After her icy bath, she fell gravely ill with pneumonia, which “marked the start of Siddall’s all-consuming addiction to the opioid, on which she would eventually overdose in 1862” (Emily Zarevich)3.
Her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted Beata Beatrix following her death. Rossetti modeled Dante’s lost love, Beatrice, after his wife. A haloed red dove, symbol of love, nudges a white poppy (signifying laudanum) into Beatrice’s open hands.
Here again, death is portrayed as a point of erotic rapture. Rossetti’s ardor and grief mingle in the pigments brightening Beatrice’s lips. She is leaning forward, eyes closed, mouth open, neck full and bare. It is a posture indicative of sexual pleasure and languorous submission to death.
The ultimate driving force of love — the fear of its ending — suffuses this painting, making it powerful erotic.
Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874
Rossetti modeled Proserpine after his new muse and lover, Jane Morris — wife of his friend and fellow artist, William Morris. This painting manifests “the culmination of [Rossetti’s] entwined artistic and erotic fixations.”4
Proserpine, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Persephone, is Queen of the Underworld. The edges of this myth are well-worn by now. In it we see the erotic draw of death/Hades as at once a frightening kidnapper and a figure of sexual power. The Underworld is the realm of the dead, but it is also Proserpine’s wedding bed.
In Proserpine, the features of Rossetti’s lover are colored in muted, pensive blue hues. Against this, the pomegranate stands out sharply, its flesh the shade of Proserpine’s lips. She has just taken a bite of the forbidden fruit, a parallel to Eve biting the primordial apple (itself a myth of death’s sensuality: Eve bites the fruit, a metaphor for sexual proclivity, and thus sentences humankind to the doom of mortality).
It’s really all about the women
The idea of an artistic “muse” itself is inherently sexual. As feminist author Germaine Greer writes, “The muse in her purest aspect is the feminine part of the male artist, with which he must have intercourse if he is to bring into being a new work.”5
The muse is essential to Pre-Raphaelite art. Her ability to create life imbues her with erotic power, while the inseparability of death from that life darkens her — making her somehow even more desirable.
Thank you so much for reading! For more information on the Pre-Raphaelites,
provides some lovely reading lists.If you want to read about the ways art, literature, and history engage with love and relationships, consider subscribing! <3
All love,
LoLo
There were indeed seven founding members of the Brotherhood: William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner. However, Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt were the leading visionaries.
The Crossroads Gazette — Art, Myth, and Literature: The Pre-Raphaelites
“Jane Morris: A Pre-Raphaelite Artist and Muse”, Marija Canjuga, DailyArt Magazine
“The role of the artist’s muse”, Germaine Greer
One of my favorite art movements. I loved what you pieced together here!
Very nice!!
It's a a pleasure to read anything about the Pre-Raphaelites and to discover more people talking about them!
I think the 'Roman widow' by Rossetti is another painting fits very well to what you explained on your post.
I've seen it in the exhibition they had here in Italy last year, and it's one of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen!
'Love in Autumn' by Simeon Solomon is another one that I think it also has this appeal of Eros and Death.