Proserpine

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 

Date: 1881-82 

Materials: Oil on canvas

Empress of Hades

This depiction of Jane Morris as a doomed classical heroine was described by Rossetti thus:

"The figure represents Proserpine as Empress of Hades. After she was conveyed by Pluto to his realm, and became his bride, her mother Ceres importuned Jupiter for her return to earth, and he was prevailed on to consent to this, provided only she had not partaken of any of the fruits of Hades. It was found, however, that she had eaten one grain of a pomegranate, and this enchained her to her new empire and destiny. She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand." 

Image of Jane

"As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the light 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 (a decorative appendage to the sonnet inscribed on the label) may be taken as a symbol of clinging memory".

This was one of Rossetti's favourite images of Jane, and was first drawn as a large pastel at Kelmscott in the summer of 1871. As Virginia Surtees observes, "The subject of Proserpine bound to her husband except for a few short periods of escape would seem to bear an analogy to the circumstance of their own two lives". 

Last painting

The first oil painting derived from the 1871 pastel caused Rossetti severe problems: although completed in the spring of 1873, it had to be repainted.

Rossetti reluctantly made a replica in coloured chalks for William Graham, "to meet a debt which he proved (to my surprise) of £100 . . . and which had got quite overlooked for years".

Rossetti began this final 'Proserpine' in September 1881: certain areas of hasty execution conform with the belief that this was the last picture finished by the artist, just a few days before his death at Birchington-on-Sea on Easter Sunday 1882.