Ligeia Siren is a chalk drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (DGR) that was completed in 1873. The painting depicts a siren, a creature from classic Greek mythology, that also appear in tales such as Homer's Odyssey or Virgil's Georgics. The drawing is predominantly inspired from Rossetti's own 1869 libretto The Doom of the Sirens with which Ligeia is one of the female leads. Instead of depicting the traditional encounter of the siren with her victims entranced by her beauty and powers of music, doomed to a terrible fate, as in The Siren (1900) by John William Waterhouse or Ulysses and the Sirens (1909) by Herbert James Draper. Rossetti depicts a timeless moment, where contrary to his depiction of her in his libretto, she appears tranquil and relatively innocuous to her intended victims in the background.
In his extremely detailed documentation of his brother's life and works, William Michael Rossetti documented DGR writing of Ligeia Siren as "certainly one of my best things" and though it was only a drawing done in chalk that it was "quite an elaborate picture." The body is that of an unknown woman, however face of the drawing is that of model Alexa Wilding, with whom Rossetti drew and painted often and can be seen as the subject of many of his works at this time such as La Ghirlandata and Veronica Veronese. She is standing amongst vegetation. with an exotic instrument, staring out into the distance. The bird on the instrument acts to identify the female figure as a siren from antiquity, as they were originally depicted with wings or "birds inhabited by soulds of the dead.
The Doom of Sirens
Outside of his inner circle of friends, family, and wealthy patrons, Rossetti was often more well known for his poetry and pieces of literature than his paintings or drawings. Yet this libretto is still largely unknown. It is an ornate delivery of one of Rossetti's obsessions: the femme fatale and his "lifelong exploration of the complex social and cultural significance of the (female) figure" and it was only published after his death by his brother William. Rossetti has written and drawn or painted several other works with subject matter concerning the myth of the Siren. A poem "Death's Songsters" (1870) and a prose piece "The Orchard Pit" (1869) as well as his drawing Boatmen and Siren (1853) and his oil painting A Sea-Spell (1877).
In his libretto, Ligeia is one of the three sisters of sirens, the other two being Thelxiope, Thelxione, living on a remote island titled "Siren's Rock" . With her song of love, Ligeia claims the life of a king and queen, whose son is miraculously rescued by the hermit. The very same hermit who previously issued the couple a warning to stay clear of the island. Before she dies the queen curses Ligeia to the same fate of her victims, that she may love and die for it. Years and years later, that same rescued prince returns to the island to enact the doom of the sirens. Ligeia eventually meets her fate.
With in The Doom of Sirens, and within Ligeia Siren as well, there are core themes for Rossetti. One of the themes is the juxtaposition of the pagan/Christian dichotomy, the clash of a pagan mythical being and a Christian prince, and the triumph of the prince in the end . Also present, and more important for Rossetti, is the survival of love even when death is eminent or even after death has occurred.
Music and Art
Rossetti often uses musical instruments next to a beautiful women in his paintings. Ligeia Siren uses an Indian sarinda with which Ligeia is holding delicately. In the 1870s artists were fascinated by the relationships between sounds, colors, and the senses. Walter Pater published in 1877 The School of Giorgione where he famously stated that "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music."