of the punctuality with which the prescriptions of this sovereign of aesthetics were followed. Indeed, a tourist who follows the injunctions of Mornings in Florence when visiting the city of Savonarola could leave the banks of the Arno having seen neither the Tribune, nor the Palazzo Pitti, nor the Palazzo Vecchio, nor the Loggia, nor San Marco, nor most of the other things for which one generally visits Florence. But he will have shivered behind the funerary monument of the marquise Strozzi Ridolfi in the cloister of Santa Maria Novella, and ruined his eyesight in a dark chapel of Santa Croce, and it would be a miracle if, while contemplating the Campanile from all directions, exposed to the air with his feet in the mud, he didn’t get a stiff neck. Now, these aesthetic stations were shown to around thirty English men and women, for six days in a row, in the order prescribed by Ruskin. These aesthetes could be found peering at the rays of sunlight in the Bardi chapel in front of Giotto as prescribed in Book III, and scrutinising the narrow door in the fresco The Triumph of Saint Thomas Aquinas. They were seen running from Santa Maria Novella to the Uffizi at a quarter past eleven, just as Ruskin desired, and hurrying from the Duomo to the Spanish Chapel’s Chiostro Verde in order to compare the effects of the vaults, without losing a moment looking right or left down the street that they were crossing to avoid weakening the impression on the eyes. Finally, they were seen at the tombstone of Galileo Galilei, at the entrance of Santa Croce. And in the solemn shadow of the temple, listening to the profound and eloquent words of this great admirer of beauty, one experiences a striking sensation. One forgets that this visit is part of an immutable Cook’s tour. The magic of the great writer makes it again possible to see these places as part of an aesthetic pilgrimage. One seems to see Brother Egidio and Saint Louis moving silently toward one another in the depths of the old chapel, as in the legend where they see one another for the first time, embrace without exchanging a single word, and leave one another forever…
At the time when the young Hunt read his first work, John Ruskin was not yet a universally-known author whose books were reproduced by the million, but his keen words already carried authority. However, this authority was only honorary; he was listened to but not followed. To create a revolution in painting, even the most eloquent criticism is not sufficient: one needs painters to do the job. John Ruskin did not find them close to him, and scanned the horizon to no avail, wondering if a few new men might appear whom he could make into his disciples.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Wedding of St. George and Princess Sabra, 1857.
Watercolour on paper, 36.5 × 36.5 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival Were Fed with the Sanct Grael; but Sir Percival’s Sister Died by the Way, 1864.
Watercolour on paper, 29.2 × 41.9 cm.
Tate Britain, London.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel, 1859.
Watercolour on paper, 29.3 × 33.9 cm.
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, Birmingham.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Before the Battle, 1858, retouched in 1862.
Transparent and opaque watercolour on paper, mounted on canvas, 41.4 × 27.5 cm.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The Pre-Raphaelite Battle
This was the state of affairs in England when, one evening in the year 1848, three young painters who worked in the same studio were taking tea at the home of the most wealthy among them. One was of Italian origin and the other two were English, and they were friends in the same way as sailors who set sail together and depend upon one another for help. They were thumbing through a collection of engravings by Campo Santo de Pise that lay on the table. All three of them were weary of the banalities of their school, and had been searching for several years for a master to whom they could devote themselves in order to escape from general movements, stereotyped poses and expressions traced from the classics, each new tracing diluting the primitive beauty of the original. These frescoes by Campo Santo were a revelation. Thousands of tourists had already passed before them without creating a new school of painting. But these tourists were not tormented by the desire to create a place for themselves away from Leslie, Maclise and Mulready, to blaze a new trail at any cost; they did not have the zeal of these twenty-year-olds…
The young men spoke of simple, individual, conscientious art employing neither formulae nor studio practices, the art of Benozzo Gozzoli and of Orcagna. “In this art, there is only the most meticulous, thorough imitation of nature possible, and the naive expression of religious ideas. Look at the expression of this horse! And see how this hermit prays with all his heart! And what colour should all this be? It should have the colours of van Eyck’s work, fresh and brilliant! Colours applied directly to a white canvas… What has made art banal is that there is no longer this direct pursuit of nature. And it was lost quite a while ago! Rubens had already lost it, as had Carrache… even Jules Romain, even Raphael had lost it! To find masters that we can follow fearlessly, we will need to look to the period before Raphael, ‘Pre-Raphaelite’ art.” The night carried on, and teacups were emptied one after the other. When the last one was finished, Pre-Raphaelitism had been born.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Bower Meadow, 1850–1872.
Oil on canvas, 86.3 × 68 cm.
Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante’s Vision of Rachel and Leah, 1855.
Watercolour on paper, 35.2 × 31.4 cm.
Tate Gallery, London.
These three friends were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. All three of them had great natural abilities and a furious desire to succeed, and this trio made a perfect whole. Hunt had faith, Rossetti eloquence, and Millais talent. The Italian was more poetic, Millais was more of a painter, and Hunt was more Christian. Rossetti, anxious and agitated, needed to prophesy something, anything, to anyone who came along. The conscientious Hunt needed to believe in something and devote himself to a great cause. The practical and ambitious Millais needed a theory to set him apart from the crowd of skilful painters and was unconcerned with believing or prophesying. They set to work. Rossetti recruited adepts somewhat randomly, Hunt took great pains to conform to the precepts of the cult, and Millais reaped the applause. Seeing the leader, people said “How well he speaks!” Observing the disciple, they said “How devoted he is!” and seeing their friend, “He makes such beautiful things!” Only after many long years did it become apparent that the disciple did not do what he was told, and that their friend was successful only because he did not listen to the leader or imitate the disciple.
In France, these revolutionaries would have been content with supporting the same ideals and going to the same café for meetings. But in England, where three admirers of Shakespeare or Browning could not meet without forming a Shakespeare Reading Society or a Browning Discussion Group, the Pre-Raphaelites created a Brotherhood. And, as all Englishmen have a pronounced taste for following their names with a few different letters, with three or four specimens from the alphabet, they decided that each Pre-Raphaelite Brother would include the initials of his new title, P.R.B, in his signature. They included them in the addresses of their letters when writing to one another, but this
