Focus on Ligeia Siren and discuss the Music and art.
Rossetti often uses musical instruments next to a beautiful women in his paintings. Ligeia Siren uses an Indian sarinda with which Ligeia is holding delicately. In the 1870s artists were fascinated by the relationships between sounds, colors, and the senses. Walter Pater published in 1877 The School of Giorgione where he famously stated that "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."Dante Gabriel Rossetti also believed that music had power to entrance and transport the viewer elsewhere. It had the power to set a mood and this is something he looked to accomplish in his own works. He also used this musicality to express a wider viewpoint and fascination with the physiognomy of his work, a way in which the beauty of the women he depicts reveal inner qualities or truths about them and this is extended to the instruments that he places within the compositions. His use and placement of the instrument in his works were usually calculated and purposeful, even their misuse or improper positioning by the predominant figure, in order to achieve his incredibly symbolic and expressive aims he would enhance or sharpen physical features of both figure and instrument. With Ligeia Siren, the power of the mythical being lies within her music. Rossetti recognized celestial associations with music and its means to lift everyday people from their boring lives into a spiritual one.
physiognomy Dante Gabriel Rossetti The School of Giorgione Walter Pater sarinda