Dante Gabriel Rossetti - The Beloved (The Bride)

Title: The Beloved (The Bride)
Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1888)
Date: 1865
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 83 × 76 cm
Location: Tate, London, England

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Beloved (The Bride) is a representation of a scene from the "Song of Songs" (aka Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon) form the Old Testament. In the scene represented a bride is shown at the moment of unveiling. She pulls a sheer veil from her face and steps forward, pressed in by four attendants. In the foreground a Black page offers a golden bowl of roses.

The five women's faces form a tight wall that confronts the viewer like a living icon. Rossetti saturates the surface with emerald greens, deep reds and golds, brocaded fabrics, oriental textiles and flowers. The bride’s cool skin and green-gray eyes are set against a storm of color; her parted lips, heavy lids, and thick hair make the mood unmistakably sensual.

The instant of lifting the veil makes the viewer occupy the bridegroom’s place. The intense yet neutral gaze of the bride towards the viewer makes the painting a frank image of revelation, for some of desire.

The array of “exotic” props (Japanese and Middle Eastern textiles, heavy jewelry, orange blossom) taps into Victorian Orientalism, then fashionable in London studios. The inclusion of the Black child page signals luxury and reveals Victorian hierarchies of race and beauty that modern viewers rightly interrogate. This picture appears frequently in exhibitions that reconsider the Black presence in British painting and the visual politics of beauty.

At the Tate: Dante Gabriel Rossetti - The Beloved (The Bride)