Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Proserpine. 1880. Colored chalks on paper. The Victorian Web. JPEG file. 1 March 2012. < http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/drawings/5.html>.
Of all Rossetti's depictions, Proserpine perhaps most strongly conveys Rossetti's infatuation with her archetypal 'Pre-Raphaelite' looks; rich, raven hair and long, elegant neck, and his ideals of spiritual love, nurtured by his constant reading of Dante. Proserpine (Persephone) had been imprisoned in Pluto's (Hades’) underground realm for tasting the forbidden pomegranate. On Prosepine, Rossetti wrote: “She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal ftuit in her hand. As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the sight of the upper world; and she glances furtively towards it, immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as the attribute of a goddess. The ivy branch in the background may be taken as a symbol of clinging memory.”
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