Proserpine

Proserpine, carried off to the underworld, ate six seeds of a pomegranate — and so was bound to spend half of every year below with Hades, which is why we have winter. Rossetti catches her in a shadowed corridor of the dark realm, the bitten fruit in her hand, gazing away toward a single shaft of light from the world she has lost. The model is Jane Morris, the great obsessive love of his life, and the picture aches with it: the heavy jaw, the long throat, the sense of longing and entrapment. Rossetti painted this composition seven times. Pre-Raphaelite yearning made flesh, with a pomegranate.

Maker

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 to 1882)

Date

1874

Medium of the original

Painting

Original held by

Tate Britain, London

Credit

Tate Britain, London · via Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-00657