Proserpine

In Rossetti's Proserpine, Jane Morris has bitten open a pomegranate. The six seeds she has already eaten are why she is trapped in the underworld for six months of every year. The myth belongs to Persephone: abducted by Pluto to Hades, allowed back to earth only after her mother Demeter's grief. Rossetti's model Jane Morris was the wife of his closest friend, William Morris. In real life she spent summers at Kelmscott Manor with Rossetti. In winter she returned to William. Rossetti did not have to invent a divided year. He painted eight versions of this composition between 1871 and his death in 1882. Now at Tate Britain, London @tate