Rossetti, Dante Gabriel - Lady lilith, The blessed damozel

LADY LILITH

This poem deals with the character of Lilith, that’s to say the first wife of Adam. Lilith can be considered a witch, who is able to charm all men. She has a strong power and she kills men which are attracted by her beauty. At the end of this poem, Lilith kills Adam, because she has been replaced by another woman, Eve.
THE PAINTING shows lady Lilith who is brushing her hair. She has the typical features of pre-Raphaelites painters: red massive hair, thick lips, white skin and long neck.
Lilith is considered an Anti-Victorian woman because she is really independent and during the reign of Queen Victoria, women were only housewives and mothers. Lilith, instead, changes the traditional stereotype of the “Victorian woman”.

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL

Rossetti begins with a careful description of his painting and then he leads us to know the damozel’s feelings. He says that the young woman leans out from the Heaven, in order to look at the man she loves. The Damozel is surrounded by some couples of lovers and, below her, there are three beautiful angels, who holds three palms. The damozel wishes that the man she loves, who seems to be a knight, could be with her, and they both pray god, so that their “dreams” comes true.
The painting can be divided into 3 parts: in the background you can see some couple of lovers in heaven, in the middle ground the Damozel with 3 lilies and 7 stars on her hair which represent the Pleiades, in the foreground three angels with palms in their hand and the lover of the Damozel who is on Earth.