Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/24

— 24 — hand, the vessel of incense, the smoke of which rises before a blinded Cupid. Gradually Rossetti expresses the mystic feeling no longer through the medium of allegory or symbolism. He begins to paint "emotions", "states", and whereas Blake found as representatives for his "states" the male and female figures, Rossetti took the figure of woman alone. In a world where everything else might be a shadow, the physical beauty of woman formed a solid basis of reality, and was accepted by Rossetti as the centre from which all emotions proceed. And gradually there appear the long row of three-quarter length portraits in water-colours and oil paint, or in crayon which all of them represent as many "Stimmungen", all of them are as many personified "states". There is an unmistakable likeness between them, (do not all "emotions" resemble each other more or less?) which consists therein, that all of them represent the "state" and its "emanation" or the emotion in its sensuous and spiritual meaning, those parts of the mood which belong to the body and those which belong to the soul. The nether part of the face is the seat of that side of the emotion which influences the senses and constitutes the baser part of it; here we always find the full red lips with a sensuous curve; the eyes Dante Gabriel Rossetti takes for the spiritual part, the "emanation" of the "state", they possess the depth and glimmer of eternity and the brilliancy of heavenly stars. Rossetti passes through the long scale of emotions and feelings which exist in the human heart and for each of them he has a picture as representative. On one end of this row we may put "Beata Beatrix" ) as expressing the summit of human bliss,