RA Magazine Summer 2009 Issue Number: 103 Life imitates art The
Pre-Raphaelite ideal of female beauty is back, judging by the
looks of some current screen idols. Debra N. Mancoff tracks the
influence of the Waterhouse Woman The resemblance is remarkable.
Separated by more than a century, the woman in the painting and
the film still of Keira Knightley share a compelling beauty.
Their faces seem carved from the same template: chiselled
profile, high cheek-bones, a defined facial contour with a
forward thrust of the chin and jaw. In both images the eyes
smoulder beneath dark, well-defined brows. They both have long
necks with a columnar strength and grace. Their pale skin –
touched with a flush of rose at the cheeks and lips – appears
luminous. Indeed, the way in which actress Keira Knightley
appears in this still from the film Atonement (2007), is so
strikingly similar to the woman in John William Waterhouse’s
painting Windflowers (1902) that we may well marvel at how
closely an ideal in art can be mirrored in