Many of the greatest muses have also been artists, bringing huge amounts of creativity to the role. ‘The Siddal-Rossetti partnership was a mutual commitment to art, poetry and each other, despite the power imbalance that inevitably existed’, explains curator, art historian and writer, Hannah Squire. He feeds upon her face by day and night, / And she with true kind eyes looks back on him…’īut Siddal was also a talented artist and poet, and inspiration flowed both ways for this pair. In her 1896 poem In an Artist’s Studio, Christina reflected on the relationship between her brother and sister-in-law, while exposing the gap between the positions of man and woman, artist and model, in Victorian society: ‘One face looks out from all his canvasses… A saint, an angel – every canvas means / The same one meaning, neither more nor less. Let’s start in the 19th century with one of art history’s most iconic muses, Elizabeth Siddall, who played a pivotal role within the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, inspiring many of its members and none more than Dante Rossetti. The muses, at their origin, possessed real power! And it’s worth pointing out that the word ‘Museum’ comes from the Greek ‘Mouseion’, Shrine of the Muses, devoted to learning and the arts, which they represent.ĭante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Regina Cordium (Wedding Portrait)’, 1860 Inside the artist-muse relationshipĮlizabeth Siddall, Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood In Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, the narrator asks the muse to ‘sing’ to him, allowing him to tell the story. In ancient art and architecture, we often seen them in with Apollo, who was the God and patron of poetry, holding instruments or with symbols of their creative power. According to Hesiod’s Theogony (7 th century BC), these divine sisters were daughters of Zeus, king of the gods, and Mnemosyne, Titan goddess of memory, and each could inspire certain art forms and held knowledge: But beyond fictional stories, such as ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, what is an artist-muse relationship really like? Having researched this very topic for the past 5 years, resulting in my book MUSE, I discovered that fact is stranger than fiction when it comes to great artists and their inspiring muses, from the ancient world to today… Meet the 9 muses of Greek mythologyĪt their origins, in ancient Greek mythology, there were 9 muses. Portrayals of the artist-muse relationship are all around us: in novels, famous films, binge-worthy TV series and, of course, art history’s narratives.
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