Since her youngest brother confirmed that Christina Rossetti's "In an Artist's Studio" is indeed based on Dante Gabriel Rossetti's love affair (obsession) for his future wife, Elizabeth Siddal, the famous sonnet offers a unique perspective on Dante Gabriel's many paintings and a particularly salient glimpse into the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Both Dante Gabriel and Siddal believed that medieval notions of artistic representation and communal artistry were viable models for artistic production in the late nineteenth century. Their movement was an elite avant-garde in contrast to the more ascetic religious leanings of Christina Rossetti, and her sonnet appears as a subtle critique of the contradictions in the Pre-Rapahelitic ideology. For Christina's religious sensibilities, Dante's attempts at forging a response to Renaissance humanism must have appeared as idolatrous and maybe even heathenish, particularly in his representations of Siddal.
As their creed, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the pre-Raphaelites believed the following: “we sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote.” In other words, Dante’s art studio acted much like the last distillation of the romantic movement. There’s was a reaction against industrialization, an expulsion of the mechanical and modern, and a return to emphasis on the human form. Why then might Christina Rossetti have felt the need to offer such a chilling critique of this movement with her sonnet “In an Artist’s Studio”?
The answer in all likelihood falls in the realm of speculation, but it seems intuitive to imagine that in the Pre-Raphaelite’s rejection of the cold and modern in favor of the real and romantic, Christina might have seen some irony. The many portraits of Elizabeth Siddal hanging in her brother’s home studio must have seemed eerily like what they were rejecting: a freezing of the human form as it was elevated to the cold hard medieval past. In giving life to their dreamy notions, Dante Gabriel missed the chance to capture the life that passed under his canvas unnoticed.
