Canvas/Mirror (Symbol)
Here, Rossetti’s speaker figures the artist’s canvases as being like mirrors; the face of the woman painted in the portrait reflects “back all her loveliness.” The canvass as mirror comparison stands as just one way that Rossetti marks the artist as a realist in the vein of the Pre-Raphaelites. Like her brother Dante’s paintings, the artist in Rossetti’s sonnet possesses an almost uncanny, medieval realism.
Opal (Symbol)
As a mineral, opal derives its beauty and value from the way in which it refracts light so as to appear made of a conglomerate of colors. In Rossetti’s sonnet, opal works as a symbol of mystery and beauty. When the woman of the portrait gets figured as “the queen in opal” dress, she stands as a symbol of royalty and mystery; the vibrancy of the colors contained in an opal gem symbolize the vibrancy of her beauty, but at the same time, the range of colors correlate to the many representations she is given by the artist.
Pygmalion (Allegory)
Like the Ancient Greek fable of Pygmalion, Rossetti’s artist toes the line between loving the woman in his paintings, and loving the painting itself. Line 14 of the sonnet suggests the latter, since he paints his love “not as she is, but as she fills his dreams" immortalizing an ideation. This is not a work for hire, or a portrait to be sold, but a labor of love that sustains the painter as he performs it. “In an Artist’s Studio,” however, deviates from the Pygmalion allegory, since his art never comes to life; instead Rossetti allows the link to Pygmalion lie implicit, all the while critiquing the notion that art equates to love of object.
Art Conveying a Meaning (motif)
To say that art, literature, or any cultural object can act as a form of expression, something to convey or hold a meaning, is not a modern concept. This was an especially pertinent way of viewing art in the late Victorian period, and both the speaker of her sonnet, and the artist the speaker describes, seem to hold this view. Even though “every canvass means the same one meaning,” each canvas still means and carries with it some expression of the artist, in this case, perhaps his (unrequited) love.
Painting and Unrequited Love (motif)
It is not the model who looks upon the painter with love, but the multitude of pictures he has made of her. His obsessive painting appears more like unsolicited courtship than artistic drive. He paints and receives nothing in return, except an intensified desire for his object, the woman, whom he then paints again.
