THE GIRLHOOD OF 

 MARY VIRGIN 



BY 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 



IN the year 1848, three young English painters, Dante Gabriel 

 Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, founded 

 the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, the aim of which was to bring back 

 to modern art the sincerity of those painters who had preceded Raphael. 



The original characteristics of the brotherhood's work were a 

 simplicity in the types chosen and a workmanship almost Flemish in 

 its careful and minute finish. But later, and more particularly in the 

 work of Rossetti, ' Preraphaelism ' became associated with a certain 

 mysticism of subject whose deeper meaning was accentuated and 

 elucidated by the use of symbols and more especially flower symbols. 



Rossetti's earliest exhibited work was ' The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,' 

 painted in 1849. 



The Virgin with Saint Anne by her side, sits at an embroidery 

 frame and works upon a strip of red material the lily with two flowers 

 and a bud which grows in a vase before her. A little rosy winged angel 

 waters the lily, and, lying crossed upon the ground, is a seven-leaved 

 palm and a seven-thorned briar, united by a little scroll bearing the. 

 words 'Tot dolores, tot gaudia.' 



The second part of the double sonnet written by the artist for this 

 picture explains to some extent the symbolism. 



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