Marie Spartali Stillman: women become protagonists of Dante's iconography
Abstract
The essay offers an analysis of Marie Spartali Stillman's paintings inspired by Dante. The paintings by the Greek-born English artist, produced in the period between 1880 and 1914, not only bear witness to the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite idea of Dante, but also enter the canon of an iconography that until then - with the exception of Sophie Giacomelli's illustrations of the Commedia - was predominantly male. Trained in the Pre-Raphaelite milieu, as the paintings with Dante's subject matter demonstrate, for Spartali the artistic practice is also a way of finding her own style, emancipating herself from her ‘fathers’ and finding a space as an artist and as a woman in Victorian England.
Keywords
Dante, New Life, iconography, canon, pre-Raphaelites, women, Marie Startali StilmanReferences
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