Been a while since last post. But last year did bring much more writing on this blog than both the previous years combined. We'll see what this year brings.
To start - some kerfuffle. I enjoy this sort of nonsense building, but it takes a lot out of me producing it - the research alone! Really!
"...though atypically restrained for a work of this period in Rosetti's life, "Sesso Signoro con Orso" exemplifies Dante's obsessive longing for a more direct eroticism he had yet to comfortably embrace in his later work. The lady, likely Wilding again - though here more ephemeral than in her earlier appearances, appears in the popular motif of the period: donning a full body lace glove, posed in an ivory chair, bear cub on lap, gnawing sloppily on a fish - but where for others of the period the bear might only serve as prop, here Rosetti places much on the creature - the bear, large-eyed but bristling in the lady's lap, shows us the unbridled power of nature contained and captive to the civilizing power of woman, but awake and eager to bite. That the bear resembles a wombat may be chalked to Rosetti's peculiar picadillos - if one of his pets served as model, it would help scholars to settle some controversy on the painting's date."
"The lady gazes toward a grove of Ash, inaccessible, mysterious, guarded by that enduring icon of paintings of this period, the St Bernard, whiskey barrel at neck... its eyes here a captivating mix of fierce danger and alluring mystique - the St Bernard here could be Uriel before Eden - a familiar but foreboding guarian to the faerie world - an imagined otherworld for which our gloved maiden longs, but knows she can not visit without forever being lost, and unbeared."
"Although fossil records indicate early attempts to domesticate smaller bear species such as Ursus americanus in North America, it is likely climate change and a lack of stable agricultural civilization prevented those efforts from taking hold. Though amusing to imagine a 'lap bear' as a modern alternate to the pet dog, it is unlikely given modern attitudes towards animal treatment that such a pet will ever now come to be"
