It has been charged against many Pre-Raphaelite paintings that their elaborate symbolism, and the highly subjective development of the designs, require not merely titles and texts, but footnotes also, for their explanation. In the pictures of Holman Hunt especially, this charge may have some weight; but it may be fairly met by the consideration of the close and deep thought, the prolonged spiritual fervour—unexampled since the Italian Pre-Raphaelites—in which each masterpiece is steeped, and which surely brings a claim upon such intelligent study as would enable all but those wholly ignorant of Christian symbology to interpret the details for themselves. Rossetti said of one of Hunt’s pictures that “the solemn human soul seems to vibrate through it like a bell in a forest.” That sound, once caught, yields the keynote to the pictorial scheme, and attunes all the latent music to its perfect end.
Rossetti, however, in no case employed the symbolic-figure method, so triumphantly used in “The Light of the World,” for his Biblical subjects; but reserved it for the realm of romantic allegory and classic myth. His illustration of the eternal truths of penitence and aspiration, of “the awakening conscience” and the resurrection of the soul, is given us in his beautiful drawing of “Mary Magdalene at the door of Simon the Pharisee.” The scene is laid amid the revelry of a village street at a time of festival. Mary, passing with a throng of gay companions, sees, through the window of a house, the face of Christ; and with a sudden impulse leaves the procession and tears the flowers passionately from her hair, seeking to enter where He sits; the while her lover, following, strives to dissuade her, and to lead her back to the mirthful company. The appeal of passion and the answer of the repentant woman, beautiful in her mingled shame and triumph, are best recounted in Rossetti’s own words, from the most successful of his sonnets on his own designs:
“Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair? Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek. Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek; See how they kiss and enter; come thou there. This delicate day of love we too will share Till at our ear love’s whispering night shall speak. What, sweet one,—hold’st thou still the foolish freak? Nay, when I kiss thy feet they’ll leave the stair.”