DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61290#0098
74
DANTE ROSSETTI
James Collinson, whose somewhat desultory but
genuinely imaginative lines, “ The Child Jesus :
a record typical of the five sorrowful mysteries,”
together with an etching by the same hand, illus-
trate very markedly the peculiar phase of religious
symbolism, combined with half-ascetic, half-aes-
thetic melancholy, upon which the Pre-Raphaelites
were entering at this period, and which remained
with one, at least, of their leaders, as a permanent
and dominating element in the artistic work of a
lifetime.
But while “ The Germ ” was speeding through its
brief career, and achieving at all events some sort of
apologia for the Pre-Raphalite Brotherhood, the
leading band of painters were further expressing
and developing their principles on canvas. For
the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1850, Millais
had prepared two pictures destined to draw down
upon himself the concentrated fury of that storm of
vituperative criticism from the public press which
raged unabated for five years around the work of
the Brethren, and ultimately spent itself on their
more or less worthy disciples and successors. It is
remarkable that the chief burden of the abuse
heaped upon the Pre-Rephaelites by the art
censors of the period should have been borne in
the first instance by one, in some respects the
most brilliant of the band, who in after years
departed more entirely from his early principles in
DANTE ROSSETTI
James Collinson, whose somewhat desultory but
genuinely imaginative lines, “ The Child Jesus :
a record typical of the five sorrowful mysteries,”
together with an etching by the same hand, illus-
trate very markedly the peculiar phase of religious
symbolism, combined with half-ascetic, half-aes-
thetic melancholy, upon which the Pre-Raphaelites
were entering at this period, and which remained
with one, at least, of their leaders, as a permanent
and dominating element in the artistic work of a
lifetime.
But while “ The Germ ” was speeding through its
brief career, and achieving at all events some sort of
apologia for the Pre-Raphalite Brotherhood, the
leading band of painters were further expressing
and developing their principles on canvas. For
the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1850, Millais
had prepared two pictures destined to draw down
upon himself the concentrated fury of that storm of
vituperative criticism from the public press which
raged unabated for five years around the work of
the Brethren, and ultimately spent itself on their
more or less worthy disciples and successors. It is
remarkable that the chief burden of the abuse
heaped upon the Pre-Rephaelites by the art
censors of the period should have been borne in
the first instance by one, in some respects the
most brilliant of the band, who in after years
departed more entirely from his early principles in