miércoles, 12 de octubre de 2011

Mariana in the Moated Grange (1850-1851)

Obra de John Everett Millais, el que fue presidente de la Royal Academy of Art en el año 1896, el mismo año de su fallecimiento.
Millais copió para su Mariana los ventanales de la capilla de Merton College, en la universidad de Oxford.
Inspirado por el alegre colorido de los manuscritos de la Edad Media, sirvió de ilustracioón a un poema de Tennyson. La actitud fresca y desinhibida de Mariana al desperezarse le da un toque de cercanía a la composición.





Alfred Tennyson, Lord Tennyson



Mariana




With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, 'The night is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, 'The day is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, 'The night is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!'

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call'd her from without.
She only said, 'My life is dreary,
He cometh not,' she said;
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,'
I would that I were dead!'

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then, said she, 'I am very dreary,
He will not come,' she said;
She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,
O God, that I were dead!'

jueves, 19 de mayo de 2011

Proserpina - Dante Gabriel Rossetti



Proserpina (1873-1877)
Tate Gallery, Londres.

"Está representada en un oscuro pasillo del palacio, con el fruto fatal en la mano...
Tiene el incensario al lado, como un atributo de divinidad. La rama de hiedra del fondo...puede ser entendida como símbolo de memoria que conquista"

De una carta de D.G. Rossetti a W.A. Turner

miércoles, 30 de marzo de 2011

jueves, 10 de marzo de 2011

Los prerrafaelitas en Roma



Desde el pasado día 24 de febrero y hasta el 12 de junio del 2011 en la Galeria Nacional de Arte Moderno de Roma se ha presentado la excposición
dedicada a la relación entre el siglo XIX británico y el arte y la cultura italiana, de "el sabor de lo primitivo" hasta el siglo XVI, comenzando por los inspirados paisajes de Italia de William Turner, a través del estudio de John Ruskin en la pintura italiana, monumentos y la arquitectura.





El núcleo de la exposición en Roma incluye los prerrafaelistas Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones y William Morris. Explora la particular versión del clasicismo operado por artistas como Frederic Leighton y representantes de la cultura estética simbolista o como Albert Moore, George F. Watts y John William Waterhouse.






Una gran ocasión para ver a Burne-Jones, Dante G. Rossetti, William Morris y otros pintores muy interesantes.


John William Waterhouse




Lord Frederic Leighton


George Frederick Watts



Albert Moore