PRE-RAPHAELITE ART AND THE EXPLORATION OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY
PRE-RAPHAELITE ART AND THE EXPLORATION OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Summary/Abstract: After the Tate Gallery 1984 exhibition, a significant part of the writings regarding the Pre-Raphaelites focused on gender and sexuality. Modern viewers appear not to feel compelled anymore to agree with the dominant or traditional interpretation of the works of art; on the contrary, they are permitted to set forth new meanings that regard the works and to experiment their own practices of interpretation. And, in the case when such premises are taken into consideration, Pre-Raphaelite painting can be reinterpreted while neglecting the patriarchal ideologies of their time. In the early 1850s, a series of paintings made by certain members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood conveyed the painters’ interest both in male and in female sexuality. Later, by the 1860s, Pre-Raphaelites’ erotic explorations of human physical beauty determined the abandoning of complex narratives in favour of representations of single figures that allow the viewers to focus almost entirely on the figure’s psychology.

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