British painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was one of the artists who founded the pre-Raphaelite movement, which advocated a return to studying nature starting in 1948. He painted Bruna Brunelleschi in 1878. It was one of his last paintings. His friend Jane Morris, whom he had portrayed countless times before, served as his model.
Her slender neck, fleshy lips, masculine traits and melancholic gaze epitomise the pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. This artistic movement embodied the pendulum swing away from pictorial academicism, back to the simplicity and grace that the First Renaissance had ushered in. Rossetti borrowed much in this woman's three-quarter profile, tilting face looking at something far away outside the frame, emerging from an even background, from portraits that Vinci, Botticelli and Dürer had painted. It makes a clear break from the school of romantic portraits by elevating the untamed, unbridled, wavy hair to the sublime.
The whole portrait provides a prop for the finery. The hair's brown tone and coppery hints that gave this painting and the woman it depicts their names, contrast sharply with the cold hues on her dress, necklace, face and background. The light is bright enough to turn the hair into a material on a par with silk and gold, and is even softer than skin.
The hairdos that Rossetti painted were poles apart from the Victorian day's constricted styles, and invariably encapsulated brimming, fiery and sometimes poisonous sensuality (Lady Lilith's locks are one example). Their erotic movement breathes life into them, they unfurl unto sumptuous rolls, and cascade down the shoulders of these demonic women whom 19th-century painters and poets took great pleasure in enshrining.
