CAS AH 287 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Ecce Ancilla Domini, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Tribal Art

• School: Boston University
• Department: History of Art & Architecture
• Course: CAS AH 287
• Professor: Jonathan Ribner

Document Summary

Rossetti saw art as a vehicle for representing ideas. Ecce ancilla domini minimal of formal elements expanded its symbolism by painting nearly entire canvas in shades of white. Even more clearly than its companion work the girlhood of mary virgin , this painting defines the difference between the early pre-raphaelite style of dgr and that of his contemporaries, especially millais and hunt. All the pre-raphaelites incline to the primitive in their preference for primary colors and color purity. The close rendering of minute detail, which hunt especially promoted, was less important to dgr, who used close detail in more selective ways. Most important, however, is dgr"s impulse to recapture certain non-illusionistic symbolic techniques of dugento and trecento primitive art. His notorious disconnect with rules of perspective has been poorly understood by later critics and art historians, who fail to see that his impatience with systematic illusionism is a function of his attachment to other techniques of pictorial spatialization.