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La Bella Mano

Decent Essays

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “La Bella Mano” is an intriguing painting that faithfully contains symbolic objects, intricate detail, and vividness of colour. These elements all reinforce the Pre-Raphaelite goals (Lecture 4). Furthermore, Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote a sonnet to accompany the piece which adds another layer of meaning in understanding the painting.
The “proliferated minute detail across the whole work” is punctuated across the entire canvas. At the bottom left of the painting, there is a wooden object that looks as though a master carpenter chiseled it for the Goddess of the painting. The wooden object’s focal point is a fleur-de-lis and stemming from this symbol are intricately woven strands that fill in the rest of the object. Additionally, the patterns that stem from the fleur-de-lis do not seem to have a preordained order to them, which suggests that the carpenter was working …show more content…

A few of the intricate details i mentioned previously also are medieval symbols of royalty or coat of arms such as the fleur-de-lis (Almost every House of France) , the double-headed eagle (the Holy Roman Empire, to name one), and the gryphon (the House of Griffin). These signs of nobility reinforce the Goddess’ station beside the fact that she is the painting’s overall focal point being the largest subject on the canvas and reinforced by her red dress and the mirror that creates an aureole around her head with two maidens attending to her hygiene and accessories. After reading the poem, it becomes clear that there are two types of jewelry both silver and gold. Again there is a symbolic here of two choices, the path of silver or the path of gold. There are so many interpretations of this, but I see the gold as being haughtier and the silver as a humbler approach to living

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