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TITLE (supplied by the customer): "The Blessed Damozel"

DESCRIPTION (supplied by the customer): It's a painting by Dante Rossetti. It's located at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. The research paper should include: Thesis statement, as much as possible about the art work itself, compare it to other portraits by the same artist or like images by other artist. Try to focus more on the one piece of art. Is it unusual work for artist or is it a typical example of artist mature style? What role does portraiture play in the artist oeuvre?

PROJECT DEVELOPED:

Introduction.

The Blessed Damozel remains to day one of the more heavily discussed and explicated pieces, most notably of those ever wrought by Rossetti's hand. It would however be analytically incorrect to interpret the work of art outside its historical and authorial context, more so given that the artist was also the author of the four different manuscripts all underlying the main plot behind the message. This was no mere coincidence in the case of Rossetti's work, as he himself came early on to sense a dual talent and propensity for both artistic paths of self-expression. Indeed, what for the layman might appear to be distinct and non-overlapping disciplines even within the same artistic field, for genius such as the one boasted by the offspring of an upright Protestant family in the time period of nostalgic religious renaissance, was a natural way of utilizing the tools most complementary and most conducive to building a powerful concept.

In the present study, we will attempt an analysis of this famous painting in particular, by making occasional reference to the general canvass of his painting and ideological backing behind it. We will argue that the piece at study does not seem to represent a transient theme pertaining to his psychologically immature youth period. On the contrary, some of the influencing themes, notably Alighieri's Vita Nuova and his Divine Comedy, had a lasting if permanent effect on his subsequent quest. The surrounding milieu did provide increasingly adequate feedback, thereby refining Gabriel's concept of the human and divine universe; and yet, that refinement did not likely amount to a major revision of deeply inspiring themes (which, as will be conjectured later in text, may well prove extremely conducive techniques in terms of the audience's responsiveness statically and over generations alike). The bibliographical review will largely be based on Dobbs (1977) and Baum (1937).

Discussion.

His complex and uneasy nature was in a constant search for that concept, and in fact it was poetry where he had acquired an early taste yet was at times being discouraged by some prominent authorities in the area, who committed an honest effort to dismiss his overly idealistic perceptions of the enterprise, as a youth. This very idealism might have served him well in stimulating an unquenchable zest for exploring the frontiers of artistic faculty. The story encapsulated in his The Blessed Damozel has been ascribed to his early idealistic views of love and romantic relationships that matured with the passage of time only to see (take heed and start reflecting in his art) the routine and even ugly facets of such adventures, which may have forced him into a major rethinking of what was and was not worthy of deification.

It is ironic that Rossetti never imprinted his name in the artistic annals as a major poetry figure. On the one hand, his scope has been considered a bit too narrow, and his literary heritage of primary interest for the students in the biographical or specialized field. His only vividly pronounced and thought provoking piece has been-again ironically, in a complementary pair,--his Damozel, both the portrait and the poem. Each of the four different manuscripts are dated to a certain time period, and the one dated 1857 is generally believed to be written (edited) earlier (Baum, 1937: xi). One reason this particular manuscript comes of interest is that it was the earliest period we have any recollections of Rossetti referring to himself as, and signing by the first name, Dante. I am deeply convinced this is no superfluous detail nor coincidence of any kind, as his work is in fact found to have been influenced by Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova. As far as the piece at study is concerned, the story apparently follows closely the idea spelled out in The Divine Comedy. 

Rossetti wrote a touching poem featuring the warm and passionate liaison between two lovers who now have to part due to circumstances they have no control over. God summons the Damozel to heaven, and her soul, still closely affine to affairs earthly, is suffering unbearably from the perspective of having to enter the Heavenly Kingdom without her beloved. His pain is shown to be as strong, and he bemoans his lot of being unworthy of sharing the glory of his all-decent loved one who the Lord has honored to cohabiting with dwellers celestial. The Damozel's soul has not yet entered the place of requiem eternam; therefore she has not yet realized either the judgment or the fact that their souls cannot reunite. She is full of grief and only hope that the all-gracious Lord who summoned her will also reunite them again soon, so that they could together sing the hymn of glory to Sabaoth. However, this realization does arrive with the passage of time, as she approaches the gates of the paradise. She comes to understand that she and her lover are divided by two worlds, and that they will never reunite as they were on earth. Her despair appeals to God, saying that the prayer of the two is the perfect prayer she knows Lord Christ favors. By and by, she is leaving her hope behind and consoles to the only possible choice left to herself and her loved one: prayer.

The plot does indeed resemble the second part of Dante's Divine Comedy, with the most overlap stemming from the deification of feelings so pure and intense they become sacrosanct and elevate the humans to the firmaments of Angelic hosts. Dante began with the deepest depth of the earth where the devil and his victims are incarcerated for an eventual trial. Alighieri, however, deployed an unusual versatility in conveying the spectrum of profiles, human natures, as well as the utmost intricacies of peripheral states. He therefore was extremely cautious to resort to extreme polarization or idealism. He depicted the father of a starving family who ended up in hell for killing his cruel and inhumane enemy who mortified his children by leaving them all alone starving. Much after the differentiated reward awaiting the righteous ones in the heavenly dwellings, so too did Dante expose the idea of differentiated punishment. For instance, the ancient Greek and Roman pagan philosophers were not condemned to hell, and were committed in limbo where there is neither suffering nor bliss. They repent they never knew Christ, but they were justified by the all-just Lord by virtue of their integrity, which amounts to moral choice. Alighieri, thus, did in fact feature an entire rainbow of virtues and vices, as well as choices and lots; whereas his namesake Dante only really picked one stripe of the rainbow, evidently the one closest to his experiences and early (tentative) impressions of youth. In the second part, Dante Alighieri transcends to heavenly dwellings, and lo he finds his beloved Beatrice. In real life, Dante did indeed deify his mistress who had died of plaque early in young age, and that intense and pure feeling, together with the righteous religious intents, probably supplied license to the inherently dubious attempt to model, albeit symbolically, matters grandiose by means of sensual ideals of imperfect beings. Dante is shown in the Comedy to face his beloved in her dazzling beauty, and gradually he realizes just how holy she has proved, as her face shines and he sees his loved one as the Divine Sophia, or Wisdom (Paradise in Comedy) ...
  
  

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