florence welch x pre-raphaelites (1/?)
‘lungs’ is full of allusions to pre-raphaelite art, and to the latter work of dante gabriel rossetti specifically- indeed, visually florence models herself as a postmodern lizzie siddal, as attested by the parallels between the tom beard photoshoot for the lungs album art, and the three rossetti paintings it suggests.
sancta lilias is an early form of his later painting, ‘the bless damozel’: a poem about a young, deceased woman who longs for her living lover’s death so they can be united once again. painted five years after the death of siddal, the paintings features are clearly hers, although the model was alexa wilding. rossetti has substituted the sacred lily- the flower of the virgin mary- for another member of the lily family, the iris- a flower associated with rainbows, and seen symbolically as the bridge between heaven and earth.
beata beatrix was rossetti’s memorial painting for elizabeth siddal following her suicide. the painting shows beatrice portinari, the beloved of dante and his guide through the heavens, at the moment of death. a red dove, symbolizing the holy spirit, sits at her knee, holding in it’s beak a red poppy- an allusion to the opiate drug, laudanum, on which siddal overdosed. beatrice sits symbolically between life and death, with an angel on one shoulder and dante at the other. her upraised face shows a moment of spiritual ecstasy, as well as sensual pleasure- ‘the small death’.
regina cordium was painted by rossetti as his marriage portrait when he and elizabeth were married in 1860. the wedding was a hasty affair that took place after a separation of about three years, during which elizabeth had severed all ties with rossetti and his circle and sought to attend art school to become an independent woman and artist. failing health drove rossetti back to her bedside and inspired their subsequent marriage. several evolutions of the painting would follow, including one of his patron’s wife and one with alexa wilding. the pansy she holds in her hand is a foreboding symbol of things to come: in the victorian language of flowers, the pansy was a funeral flower, meaning ‘fond remembrance’.
the use of the elizabeth siddal paintings as the design for the ‘lungs’ cover goes far deeper than artistic merit- woven throughout the album is the paradoxical themes of life, death, love, and hate- “sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell”. the divisive nature of the relationship between rossetti and elizabeth siddal is a romantically morbid inspiration for an album with such lush instrumentals and eternal themes as florence + the machines ‘lungs’.
