DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61290#0280
DANTE ROSSETTI
232
Galahad in the Ruined Chapel,” and later, in
Burne-Jones’s more severe and chastened types of
the pilgrim-knight. It has been charged against
both these painters that the physical beauty and
glory of manhood was almost wholly absent from
their conception of life. Even in the nearest
approach to such a concession, in the latest ro-
mantic masterpiece of the younger artist, “ The
Legend of the Briar Rose,” the asceticism learnt at
the Arthurian shrines persists, indeed, in the
mellowness of his maturity. The heroes of the
Pre-Raphaelites are no muscular warriors, as con-
ventional art would portray them. They are con-
cerned with inward conflicts rather than with
outward foes. They are the knights-errant of a
new chivalry,—to whom moral righteousness is a
higher thing than physical courage ; self-conquest
a nobler triumph than the routing of armies. For
they “ wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places.” The whole
series of the Arthurian designs, from the illustra-
tions to Moxon’s "Tennyson” and the frescoes at
Oxford, onward to the latest work of Burne-Jones
and his followers, are dominated by this idea of a
spiritual pilgrimage, as of beings exiled from a
higher realm, which to regain they must needs
pass through the lower. "Their sojourn on earth,”
232
Galahad in the Ruined Chapel,” and later, in
Burne-Jones’s more severe and chastened types of
the pilgrim-knight. It has been charged against
both these painters that the physical beauty and
glory of manhood was almost wholly absent from
their conception of life. Even in the nearest
approach to such a concession, in the latest ro-
mantic masterpiece of the younger artist, “ The
Legend of the Briar Rose,” the asceticism learnt at
the Arthurian shrines persists, indeed, in the
mellowness of his maturity. The heroes of the
Pre-Raphaelites are no muscular warriors, as con-
ventional art would portray them. They are con-
cerned with inward conflicts rather than with
outward foes. They are the knights-errant of a
new chivalry,—to whom moral righteousness is a
higher thing than physical courage ; self-conquest
a nobler triumph than the routing of armies. For
they “ wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against
spiritual wickedness in high places.” The whole
series of the Arthurian designs, from the illustra-
tions to Moxon’s "Tennyson” and the frescoes at
Oxford, onward to the latest work of Burne-Jones
and his followers, are dominated by this idea of a
spiritual pilgrimage, as of beings exiled from a
higher realm, which to regain they must needs
pass through the lower. "Their sojourn on earth,”