How to Read Paintings: Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The tragic heroine who ate a forbidden fruit
This figure represents Proserpine (known as Persephone to the Greeks), daughter of Ceres (also known as Demeter — goddess of agriculture). Here Proserpine holds a pomegranate in her hand, from which she has taken a single bite and in doing so has secured her fate as a prisoner of the Underworld.
What initially draws my eye in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s depiction of Proserpine is the awkward way she clutches the wrist of her left hand with the fingers of her right. Her arms are drawn across her front in a protective gesture, and the hands link together almost as if one is attempting to control the other. It is a contorted pose, which explains so much about the meaning of the wider picture. For this is an image of inner discord, a portrait of a life split in two.
There are several different versions of the story of Proserpine, but the most well-known of these tells of how she was abducted whilst she was gathering flowers in the Vale of Nysa by Pluto (or Hades to the Greeks). She was taken to the Underworld and forced to become his bride.
Proserpine’s mother Ceres went looking for her daughter, a search that took her all over the world, for without her daughter the crops of the Earth would not grow.
