Study for female figure in engraved illustration to Amor Mundi

‘The Love School’ and ‘Desperate Romantics’ are both terms applied to that phenomenon of British 19^th century art, Pre-Raphaelitism. In their early, most exciting phase, the Pre-Raphaelites rejected the classical tradition, which they considered frivolous and corrupt. Instead they found inspiration in gothic architecture and late medieval illuminated manuscripts, together with the legends of King Arthur and the poetry of John Keats and Alfred Tennyson. Love and romance, often taking a tragic turn, are central to Pre-Raphaelite iconography and Amor Mundi by Frederick Sandys (1829–1904) is no exception. Te Papa has two pencil studies for Sandys’s wood engraving published in The Shilling Magazine in 1865 to illustrate the poem by his friend Christina Rossetti, sister of the famous Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ‘Amor Mundi’ can be translated as ‘worldly love’ and the sensual pleasure that accompanies it. The poem begins with a pair of lovers at the top of a hill, floating in contentment. Then the mood turns sombre as they descend and are confronted by black clouds and ‘a scaled and hooded worm’. ‘Scaled’ evokes the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the ‘hooded’ image of Death awaits them. Christina Rossetti warns: ‘The downhill path is easy but there’s no turning back’. Sandys’s figures, particularly that of the woman, are seen at the moment when the idyllic mood changes. The little drawing of a foot is surely in response to the beautiful lines: ‘And dear she was to dote on, her swift feet seemed to float on/ The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight’.

Sourced from: http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2015/02/12/art-for-valentines-day/