Dante Gabriel Rossetti: “Pandora“
Painted in 1871, 131 by 79cm
Estimate: £5-7 million
Sotheby’s to sell Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Pandora’ Sotheby’s will sell Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Pandora’ in its London sale of British and Irish Art on 22 May 2014. Estimated at £5-7 million, Pandora is arguably the most significant painting by Rossetti to be seen at auction in recent years.]]>
April 25, 2014, source: Sotheby’s
Clad in a loose, long robe of Venetian red and adorned with bracelets, Pandora stands before us imperious in her beauty. She holds the fateful casket, from which escapes potent spirits in the form of red smoke, curling behind her and enveloping her hair. The story of Pandora originated in Greek mythology. Zeus commanded the creation of Pandora, the first woman on earth, who was formed out of clay by Vulcan. Her name (meaning ‘the gifted’) was derived from the gifts given to her by each of the Olympian gods: Aphrodite bestowed great beauty upon her; Hermes, the art of persuasion, and so forth. After Prometheus stole fire from Mount Olympus, Zeus took vengeance by handing Pandora to Epimetheus, Prometheus’ brother, whom she married. Given the eponymous receptacle by Jupiter and ordered not to open it under any circumstance, Pandora did not heed the warning and unwittingly unleashed a multitude of evils into the world, trapping only Hope inside as she hastened to contain the distempers within. For the early Church, the story of Pandora was a pagan counterpart to the story of Eve and the Fall of Man.
When Rossetti painted Pandora, he was consumed with passion for Jane Morris, wife of William Morris, his friend and associate. Between 1871 and 1874 Rossetti and Jane spent considerable amounts of time together at Kelmscott Manor, the house on the upper Thames in Oxfordshire which the artist and the Morrises rented together as a retreat. William Morris indulged his wife’s affair with Rossetti, which was probably unconsummated. By this time, Rossetti had been a widower for the best part of a decade, his wife Lizzie Siddal having died in 1862 from an overdose of laudanum.
Simon Toll, Sotheby’s British & Irish Art Specialist, commented: “It is a great privilege for Sotheby’s to offer such an important work by Rossetti. Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelites exhibition, which was subsequently staged in Washington and Moscow last year, ignited a renewed interest in Rossetti, a master of storytelling and psychology. Pandora spellbindingly combines these two obsessions of the artist and comes to the market following Sotheby’s record-breaking auction prices for Rossetti in 2013.”
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