| dc.description.abstract | Abstract
Among the most important prose writings in early Italy, Dante’s Vita Nuova (1292-1294) is regarded as his first primary work. Nevertheless, compared with another popular work of the author, The Divine Comedy, there are much less researches on Vita Nuova until 19th Century, not to mention the illustrations. And the English edition of Vita Nuova, contributed by Gabriel Rossetti in 1848, is generally viewed as the first complete translation. Actually Rossetti was going to compose a series of illustrations to the text afterwards, which were never practiced however. Yet between 1848-1879, Rossetti had produced sixteen singular paintings based on Vita Nuova, and those works had been the first iconographs of the text since Middle Age. Those paintings not only revealed the value and significance of Vita Nuova to the public, but showed the reinterpretation of the text by the painter himself.
The main issues of this thesis are as following: In which way did Rossetti represent the subject of Vita Nuova? And what meanings had these works brought forth to their audience? The answers to these question marks are described through three chapters on different levels.
Chapter One starts with the background of the artist, including factors such as Rossetti’s family, the iconographical history of Dante, and the contemporary Victorian society, in order to trace the sources of Rossetti’s choice of the Dante-subject. Introducing both Dante’s text and Rossetti’s paintings of Vita Nuova, Chapter Two analyses Rossetti’s management about this subject according to the pictorial techniques and compositions. And Chapter Three explores the deep meanings of these Vita-Nuova paintings from various aspects. Based on Dante’s original story, the paintings begin with the English translation, thus reflect the ambiguity of Rossetti’s twofold-cultural identity. Besides the main plot of the picture, the painter stretches his own explanation and imagination of the text among the complicated background details within each picture, so that the difficulty of interpretation is increased. Moreover, because of the autobiographical genre of Vita Nuova, together with the specific emotion of the namesake of Dante and Rossetti, the artist has, perhaps, empathized his own experience into the pictures as long as the subject coincides.
Therefore under the paintbrush of the artist, the audience sees not only the Vita Nuova of Dante but also that of Rossetti, which mixed up with personal experience, interpretation and imagination. While appreciating the artwork, the audience participates, unconsciously, in the private world of the artist at the same time. | en_US |