"ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI"

(Behold the Handmaid of the Lord), later known as the AnnunciaPainting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

tion.

"Ecce Ancilla Domini" (Behold the Handmaid of the Lord)

By W. Bertrand Stevens

[Gabriele Charles Dante Rossetti, better known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born in London, May 12, 1828. His father, Gabriele Rossetti, a Professor of Italian at King's College, was a poet and writer of considerable distinction. In 1846 young Rossetti became a student at the Antique School of the Royal Academy, where he remained for two years. He left in disgust and in 1848 began his friendship with Holman Hunt and Sir John Millais which afterwards resulted in the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He died in 1882 at Birchington-on-the-sea.]

Who of us that knows and loves the work of Rossetti has not at times regretted that his environment was that of the nineteenth century? Does not the Italian Renaissance with its high valuation of religious art, seem the proper setting for one whose religious ideals are so perfectly expressed in his two early pictures, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin" and "The Annunciation ?" No great technical achievements would have been his; he would never have felt the hunger for greater skill in expression that so prompted Giotto and Masaccio. Rather would he have taken his place beside Fra Angelico and have given us religious paintings in which emotional ecstacy is supreme.

The nineteenth century in England was far more favorable to the development of Rossetti as a poet than as a painter. The literary standards of his time were high, but painting had fallen to the very depths. It is natural, then, that the poetry of Rossetti should show great technical excellence while at the same time his drawing was often seriously lacking in the fundamentals. Being keenly sensitive to the good and bad in art, he fully realized that never could he express his ideas and emotions through the technical rules and formulas of the period. We are told that as a student of the Royal Academy he "was notably weak in anatomy and without any scientific knowledge of perspective." Perhaps his contempt for his contemporaries

carried him too far. There are things that he might have learned even from the most commonplace draughtsman.

Rossetti painted the "Ecce Ancilla Domini” at the age of twenty years. Previous to this his accomplishments in literature had been remarkable. He had written many poems, and his translations from Italian poetry which were published in 1861 were written between the years 1845 and 1859. When "The Annunciation" was first exhibited at the Portland Place Gallery, it shared the bitter attacks made upon the pictures of Holman Hunt and Millais which were at the same time on exhibition at the Academy. Even such writers as Charles Dickens contributed denunciatory articles to leading periodicals. And here Mr. Ruskin again appeared in the role of champion, with his letter to the Times. Rossetti offered the picture at the exhibition for fifty guineas. It was returned unsold and, being hard pressed for money, he offered it for £40. Even then it remained unsold for a long period. In 1886 it was purchased at £800 for the Tate Galley in London, where it now hangs.

The picture is in marked contrast to the Italian repre sentations of the same subject. The awakened virgin sees before her the Archangel, a wonderfully beautiful and dignified figure, bearing to her the white, annunciation lily. The chosen one of God hears her mission with the utmost meekness and with a total absence of the complacence and affected elegance that mark so many of the Renaissance representations. Although simplicity is characteristic of the picture, there are a few traces of the supernaturalism that the Italians loved so well. Golden halos are about the heads of the Angel and the Virgin, and the feet of the Angel seem to rest in pale yellow flames. Through the open window the Holy Spirit enters in the form of a dove. The general white tone of the picture is relieved by the red embroidery around the foot of the bed and by the blue curtain behind the Virgin. "Ecce Ancilla Domini" was the name given the picture by the artist, but having just closed a bargain for its sale, he changed the title to "The Annunciation."

Rossetti's "The Blessed Damozel"

The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;

She had three lilies in her hand

And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
No wrought flowers did adorn,
But a white rose of Mary's gift
For service meetly worn;

Her hair that lay along her back
Was yellow like ripe corn.

Her seemed she scarce had been a day
One of God's choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers;
Albeit, to them she left, her day
Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years,
Yet now, and in this place,

Surely she leaned o'er me-her hair
Fell all about my face.

Nothing: the autumn fall of leaves.
The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God's house
That she was standing on;
By God built over the sheer depth
The which is space begun;

So high, that looking downward thence
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath, the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge

The void, as low as where this earth

Spins like a fretful midge.

*For Rossetti's painting of the same see page 67.