Friday, May 18, 2007

The Profane -Mariana - John Everett Millais, PRB

Mariana - Sir John Everett Millais
[1851, The Makins Collection]

This scanned image of Millais' great Pre-Raphaelite painting does not do credit to the hues and shades in the original or a better print. He exhibited it at the Royal Academy in 1851, giving it no title. Instead, he gave only a few lines from Tennyson's poem, Mariana:
She only said, 'My life is dreary --
He cometh not,' she said,
She said, 'I am aweary, aweary --
I would that I were dead.'
Millais derived the stained glass in the painting from windows in Merton College Chapel, Oxford. The garden was from Thomas Combe's garden, also in Oxford.

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