The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood held its initial meeting in John Everett Millais' studio in early September 1848 (Hilton 33). Here, seven young and talented men gathered to solidify their notions of art and form a "secret" society to be known as the PRB. The primary figures of the Brotherhood where William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and the "founder" of the movement, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Four others joined them during that September day, mostly personal friends of Rossetti, including James Collinson, William Michael Rossetti, Frederic George Stephens, and Thomas Woolner (Fleming 80).
At this inaugural meeting, Rossetti brought forth a document, forged by himself and Hunt, which would be signed by all seven members. This document -- known as the "List of Immortals" -- had the following one-sentence preamble:
We, the undersigned, declare that the following list of Immortals constitutes the whole of our Creed, and there exists no other Immortality than what is centered in their names and in the names of their contemporaries, in whom this list is reflected. (Fleming 79)
While this preamble purports to add some direction and cohesion to the tenets of Pre- Raphaelitism, the variety of the list which followed reveals just how vague their original understanding of the movement was.
The List of Immortals was divided into five categories, with Jesus Christ alone at the apex -- an insistence from Hunt which won out over Rossetti's desire to place Shakespeare in this position (Fleming 79). The second category consisted only of Shakespeare and the Author of Job. It is the third category, however, which is most interesting to this study, for it included twelve men, two of whom were Goethe and Keats.
Affixing their names to this document indicated that these seven men desired to imitate what they perceived as greatness in these artists. Since it would be impossible to imitate art with which one is not familiar, it can safely be assumed that all those present were at least familiar with the artists represented on this list. Furthermore, it is a certainty that at least Rossetti was familiar with these writers, especially Goethe and Keats, whom he himself placed on the List of Immortals.
Goethe's influence on the PRB is evidenced in the adaptation of his figures, specifically Gretchen, in Pre-Raphaelite art. In her book Pre-Raphaelite Women, Jan Marsh indicates that "a perennially popular figure was Margaret or Gretchen, the seduced woman in Goethe's Faust" (64). Rossetti himself completed a number of pen drawings of Gretchen, including the 1848 ink drawing entitled "Gretchen and Mephistopheles in Church" (Radford ix, Marsh 64).
The fact that Rossetti was influenced by Goethe is also evident in conjunction with his work on the painting "Lady Lilith" (to be discussed in the next section). In 1866, for example, William Rossetti made Dante Gabriel Rossetti a transcript of the quatrain in Faust I which begins "Nimm dich in Acht" (Faust I, 3764). Rossetti translated it as follows:
Hold thou thy heart against her shining hair,
If, by thy fate, she spread it once for thee;
For, when she nets a young man in her snare,
So twines she him he never may be free. (Baum 186)
Rossetti used this quote as an "epigraph" to his painting and incorporated much of its imagery into his poem "Lilith," later renamed "Body's Beauty." Evidence indicates that Rossetti's acquaintance with the figure of Lilith was "based chiefly upon Goethe's reference to her in the Walpurgisnacht," the scene from which this quote was taken (Baum 186).
Given Goethe's fame, it is hardly surprising that he should have had such an influence upon the PRB. Somewhat more surprising is Keats' influence on this group of artists. As Timothy Hilton states in his book on the Pre-Raphaelites, "Archetypally the poet for Romantic young men, [Keats] at that date [was] still largely unknown" (28). Keats was, however, a personal favorite of Rossetti who was familiar with much -- if not all -- of his work.
Some have even indicated that the name "Pre-Raphaelite" was selected by Rossetti because of a passage he read in Lord Houghton's "Life and Letters of Keats." Here, Keats was attributed with stating that the first and second schools of Italian painting had surpassed "even Raphael himself" (Hilton 33).
Keats' influence on Rossetti was so great that some have labeled him "Rossetti's master," indicating that Rossetti owed much of his English style to Keats (Bloom 2). Although few critics have made the connection explicit, it is obvious that Rossetti had in mind poems of Keats, such as "Lamia" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci," when he painted and wrote about Lilith. Certainly, many of his images of Lilith resemble directly Keats' portrayal of Lamia/Lilith in these poems.
While Lilith was used as an image by other artists and writers who carried on the "Pre- Raphaelite" tradition, it is interesting to note that no other member of the original Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood explicitly employed imagery of Lilith. When referring to Pre- Raphaelite representations of Lilith, therefore, this paper is referring specifically to Rossetti's representations. This is partially because Rossetti, the "founder" of the movement, remained the strongest force in the PRB. This was to such an extent that most of the idiosyncrasies of Pre-Raphaelitism which are identifiable today are, pre-eminently, idiosyncrasies of Rossetti (Welland 38).
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Its Influences (1848-1954)
Rossetti's painting "Lady Lilith" (1863 and 1864-1868?)
Rossetti's poem "Lilith," later published as "Body's Beauty" (1868)
Rossetti's ballad "Eden Bower" (1869)
"Femme fatale" images in "A Sea-Spell" (1868) and "The Orchard Pit" (1869)
Return to Outline of Chapter Three
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