1. Ruskin, John, Pre-Raphaelitism (New York, 1860), 18Google Scholar.

2. de Certeau, Michel, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Randall, Steven (Berkeley, 2011), 129Google Scholar.

3. Ivanov, Viacheslav, Po zvezdam (Letchworth, Eng., 1971), 273–74Google Scholar. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

4. Elizabeth Prettejohn, introduction to Prettejohn, Elizabeth, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Pre-Raphaelites, (Cambridge, Eng., 2012), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. In my broader conceptualization of modernism, I draw on Irina Paperno’s work. She writes: “Summing up an array of intellectual and artistic trends that developed in Western European cultures and Russia, at the turn of the century and lasting into the 1930s, the concept of ‘modernism’ suggests a certain generalized new ‘consciousness,’ or ‘mentality,’ holding that the accepted model of reality, or the world itself, is up for rearrangement. This mentality drew its strength from a characteristic feeling: the apocalyptic sense that humankind was living at the ‘breaking point’ of history, destined for totally novel times in a new world. Modernism … as a reaction against positivism and realism (or naturalism).” See Paperno, Irina and Grossman, Joan Delaney, eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism (Stanford, 1994), 5Google Scholar.

6. Hägglund, Martin, Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov (Cambridge, Mass., 2012), 98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism, 5. Goldberg, Stuart, Mandelstam, Blok, and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism (Columbus, 2011), 106Google Scholar.

7. Each of these epithets can be found in contemporary journals. See, in the order quoted above, “The National Institution’s Free Exhibition of Modern Art,” The Athenaeum, April 20, 1850: 424; “The Arts: National Institution,” Spectator, April 27, 1850: 403; “The Arts. The Royal Academy,” The Spectator, May 5, 1850: 426–27; and “The Royal Academy. May Exhibition,” Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine 17 June 1850: 355–60.

8. John Ruskin, “The Pre-Raphaelite Artists,” London Times, May 30, 1851, http://www.engl.duq.edu/servus/PR_Critic/LT30may51.html (accessed on March 18, 2017).

9. Polonsky, Rachel, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 121–22Google Scholar. Pyman, Avril, A History of Russian Symbolism (Cambridge, Eng., 1994), 103–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Davidson, Pamela, The Poetic Imagination of Vyacheslav Ivanov: a Russian Symbolist’s Perception of Dante (Cambridge, Eng., 2009), 131Google Scholar.

10. Williams, Raymond, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists, ed. Pinkney, Tony (London, 1996), 60Google Scholar; Harsha Ram, “Futurist Geographies: Uneven Modernities and the Struggle for Aesthetic Autonomy: Paris, Italy, Russia, 1909–1914,” May 2012, Oxford Handbooks Online, at https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195338904.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195338904-e-13?print=pdf (accessed May 31, 2019); Piotr Piotrowski, “East European Art Peripheries Facing Post-Colonial Theory,” Nonsite.org., December 2014, at http://nonsite.org/article/east-european-art-peripheries-facing-post-colonial-theory (accessed March 18, 2017).

11. Blakesley, Rosalind P., The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757–1881 (New Haven, 2016), 2Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., 12.

13. When Solov΄ev was writing “Three Meetings,” the Pre-Raphaelites were a dominant influence on Russian Symbolists and a popular conversation topic in their circles. Solov΄ev’s family took special interest in the art of the Brotherhood and its inspirations. Vladimir Solov΄ev’s nephew, Sergei Solov΄ev, recalls his uncle’s admiration for Shakespeare and Dante, the Pre-Raphaelites’ two greatest inspirations. The young Vladimir Solov΄ev was a member of Moscow’s Shakespearean circle (kruzhok shekspiristov) and a passionate reader of Dante in Italian. His sister-in-law, Olga Solov΄eva (née Kovalenskaia), was a prolific translator of Ruskin, and the first Russian translation of his essay Pre-Raphaelitism belongs to her. Solov΄ev’s sister Poliksena had a reproduction of Raphael’s Madonna Della Sedia (1514, Palazzo Pitti) in lieu of an icon in her bedroom. The Brotherhood’s admiration for Madonna Della Sedia was such that its image appeared in their own works, for example, in Millais’ Mrs. James Wyatt Jr and her Daughter Sarah (ca. 1850, Tate Gallery). See Solov΄ev, Sergei, Vladimir Solov΄ev: zhizn΄ i tvorcheskaia evolutsiia (Moscow, 1977), 152–53Google Scholar, 215. For further discussion on Pre-Raphaelitism in Russia, see Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism; Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic.

14. Solov΄ev, Vladimir, “Three Meetings,” trans. Koprince, Ralph, in Proffer, Carl and Proffer, Ellendea, eds., The Silver Age of Russian Culture (Ann Arbor, 1975), 128Google Scholar.

15. Matich, Olga, Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia’s Fin-de-siècle (Madison, 2005), 64Google Scholar.

16. Ibid.; [Не веруя обманчивому миру, / Под грубою корою вещества / Я осязал нетленную порфиру / И узнавал сиянье божества . . .] Solov΄ev, Vladimir, “Tri Svidania” in Smysl lubvi: izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow, 1991), 449Google Scholar.

17. “L’Azur triomphe, et je l’entends qui chante /Dans les cloches. . . . / Je suis hanté. L’Azur! L’Azur! L’Azur! L’Azur!” See Mallarmé, Stéphane, Collected Poems: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Weinfield, Henry (Berkeley, 1996), 19–20Google Scholar. Emphasis in original.“Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris.” See Baudelaire, Charles, Les Fleurs Du Mal Et Oeuvres Choisies: A Dual-Language Book, ed. and trans. Fowlie, Wallace (New York, 1992), 36–37Google Scholar.

18. Rossetti was particularly fond of these colors. See Faxon, Alicia Craig, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (New York, 2005), 199Google Scholar.

19. Solov΄ev, “Three Meetings,” trans. Ralph Koprince, in The Silver Age of Russian Culture, 132. Emphasis added; [Что есть, что было, что грядет вовеки— / Все обнял тут одни недвижный взор. . . / Синеют подо мной моря и реки, / И дальний лес, и выси снежных гор.] Solov΄ev, “Tri Svidania” in Smysl lubvi: Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 454.

20. Solov΄ev, “Three Meetings,” 132, 130; [“Я всю тебя в пустыне увидал . . . ,” “Чем для ребенка ты не поскупилась / В том—юноше нельзя же отказать!”] Solov΄ev, “Tri Svidania,” 454, 452.

21. Jackson, Robert Louis, The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes (Princeton, 1981), 304Google Scholar. Further discussion of Dostoevskii’s conception of obraz and its opposite, bezobrazie, see Jackson, Robert Louis, “Two Kinds of Beauty” in Jackson, Robert Louis, Dostoevsky’s Quest for Form: A Study of His Philosophy of Art (Bloomington, 1978), 40–71Google Scholar.

22. In a similar vein, Paperno notices that “for Solov΄ev . . . the aesthetic and the erotic operate, so to speak, “in the image and likeness of Christ.” See Paperno and Grossman, eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism, 7.

23. Solov΄ev, “Three Meetings,” 128; [“Один лишь образ женской красоты.”] Solov΄ev, “Tri Svidania,” 454.

24. Vengerova, Zinaida, Literaturnye Kharakteristiki (St. Petersburg, 1897), 33, 37Google Scholar.

25. Marshall Berman describes a similar idea as one of the central motifs of modern art: “Clothes become an emblem of the old, illusory mode of life; nakedness comes to signify the newly experienced truth; and the act of taking off one’s clothes becomes an act of spiritual liberation, of becoming real.” See Berman, , All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (New York, 1988), 106Google Scholar.

26. Rossetti, William Michael, Introduction, The Germ: Thoughts Towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art (London, 1901), 18Google Scholar.

27. Treuherz, Julian, Prettejohn, Elizabeth, and Becker, Edwin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London, 2003), 86Google Scholar.

28. Notably, the other two are the Virgin Mary and Saint Lucia, who instruct Beatrice to aid Dante during his journey to the afterlife: “Speed now, / And by thy eloquent persuasive tongue, /And by all means for his deliverance meet, /Assist him.” See Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Rev. H. F. Cary, at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8800/8800-h/8800-h.htm (accessed May 31, 2019); Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, trans., The New Life (La Vita Nuova) of Dante Alighieri (London, 1899)Google Scholar, at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41085/41085-h/41085-h.htm (accessed May 31, 2019).

29. While a departure from Rossetti’s style and technique, Beata Beatrix quickly became his calling card and one of the movement’s most recognizable works. An 1896 editorial on Ford Madox Brown in The Studio magazine mentions, “. . . the photographs of the Beatа Beatrix or the Golden Stairs have penetrated into regions destitute of all knowledge of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.” See “Editor’s Room: New Publications,” The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, vol. 6 (1896), 58–60, at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112114855148;view=1up;seq=74 (accessed June 3, 2019; limited access).

30. Rossetti, in a letter from 1873. Quoted in Barringer, Tim, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (New Haven, 2012), 146Google Scholar.

31. Craig Faxon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 144.

32. A macabre detail, Rossetti made his first sketch for Beata Beatrix when Siddal was still alive but did not finish the work until eight years after her death.

33. For instance, Beatrice Meeting Dante at a Marriage Feast, Denies Him Her Salutation (1851–55), an early work for which Siddal modelled as Beatrice, is, above all, a history painting that comments on neither Siddal’s relationship with Rossetti, nor her role in his art.

34. Treuherz, Prettejohn, and Becker, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 82.

35. Sussman, Herbert L., Fact into Figure: Typology in Carlyle, Ruskin, and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (Columbus, 1979), 135Google Scholar.

36. Solov΄ev, Vladimir, Lectures on Godmanhood, trans. Zouboff, Peter (New York, 1944), 168–169Google Scholar.

37. Solov΄ev, Vladimir, Russia and the Universal Church, trans. Rees, Herbert (London, 1948), 147Google Scholar.

38. Kornblatt, Judith Deutsch, Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov (Ithaca, 2009), 7Google Scholar.

39. Although neither Burne-Jones, nor William Morris “officially” belonged to the Brotherhood, they are identified as the Pre-Raphaelites, primarily through their connection to Rossetti. See Barringer, introduction to Reading the Pre-Raphaelites.

40. It is hardly surprising, then, that one of Burne-Jones’s favorite subjects was the legend of Pygmalion. He captured it in a series of four paintings entitled Pygmalion and Galatea (1875–78, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery). In the Russian context, the legend of Pygmalion is considered a “building block of the Symbolist myth of the artist.” See Paperno and Grossman, eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism, 8.

41. Merezhkovskii, Dmitrii, “O prichinakh upadka i o novykh techeniiakh sovremennoi russkoi literatury,” in Izbrannye stat΄i: Simvolizm, Gogol΄, Lermontov (Munich, 1972), 286, 296Google Scholar.

42. For the Pre-Raphaelites, this resulted in “overindulgence in symbolism,” to quote Vengerova, and a fascination with the transcendental, perhaps most eloquently evidenced by Holman Hunt’s extended sojourn in the Holy Land in the 1850s. See Vengerova, Literaturnye Kharakteristiki, 19.

43. Along with Solov΄ev’s sophiology, Fedorov’s philosophical writings are central to the Russian Symbolists’ interest in mysticism.

44. Vladimir Solov΄ev’s friend Ivan Ianzhul writes extensively about this. His account can be found in Mochul΄skii, Konstantin, Vladimir Solov΄ev. Zhizn΄ i uchenie (Paris, 1951), 64–66Google Scholar.

45. Lounsbery, Anne, “‘Mirovaia Literatura’ i Rossiia,” Voprosy Literatury, no. 5 (2014): 18Google Scholar.

46. Milan Kundera, “‘Die Weltliteratur’: European Modernism and Novelists,” New Yorker, December 31, 2006, at http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/01/08/die-weltliteratur (accessed March 18, 2017).

47. Kundera specifically focuses on twelfth-century Icelandic sagas, “the first great prose treasure in Europe . . . created in its smallest nation.”

48. Ibid. Emphasis added.

49. M. A. Vrubel΄ to his sister Anna Vrubel΄, April 1883, in Vrubel΄: Perepiska, vospominaniia o khudozhnike, ed. E. P. Gomberg-Verzhbinskaia, Iu. N. Podkopaeva, and Iu. V. Novikov (Leningrad, 1976), 59.

50. Ruskin, John, Modern Painters, vol. 1 (London, 1846), 416Google Scholar. Emphasis in original.

51. Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, 10.

52. “I adore Bellini and Tintoretto. The former is incomparably higher, more real; . . . I don’t know why but I like Tintoretto better than Veronese. But Bellini is the best.” See M. A. Vrubel΄ to Vasilii Savinskii, January 1885, in Vrubel΄: Perepiska, 74.

53. The medieval Russo-Byzantine artistic tradition, as the name suggests, combines elements of Byzantine art with that of medieval Rus΄. In the late nineteenth century, the revival of this tradition became a dominant cultural trend in Russia, championed by the Abramsevo circle (Vrubel΄ was a member). For more information on the Russo-Byzantine revival see Taroutina, Maria, “Byzantium and Modernism” in Betancourt, Roland and Taroutina, Maria, eds., Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (Leiden, 2015), 1–15Google Scholar.

54. Pamela Davidson emphasizes the definitive impact of the Pre-Raphaelites on the development of European revivalism and an interest in the past more broadly: “[N]ostalgia for the Middle Ages was a fairly wide-spread phenomenon in late-nineteenth century Europe . . . one of the most influential expressions of this trend was the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England which, with its cult of the middle Ages and of Dante, spread to Europe and to Russia.” See Davidson, The Poetic Imagination of Vyacheslav Ivanov: a Russian Symbolist’s Perception of Dante, 15.

55. Stéphane Mallarmé, “The Impressionists and Edouard Manet,’ The Art Monthly Review and Photographic Portfolio, September 30, 1876, in Moffett, Charles S. et al. , The New Painting: Impressionism 1874–1886, exhibition catalogue (Geneva, 1986), 34Google Scholar. Emphasis added.”

56. Mackail, J. W., The Life of William Morris (London, 1899), 81Google Scholar.

57. Salmond, Wendy R., Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia: Reviving the Kustar Art Industries, 1870–1917 (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), 1Google Scholar.

58. Jackson, David, The Wanderers and Critical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Art (Manchester, Eng., 2006), 141Google Scholar.

59. Kunichika, Michael, “Our Native Antiquity”: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Culture of Russian Modernism (Boston, 2015), 19Google Scholar.

60. Benois, Aleksandr, “Vrubel΄,” Mir Iskusstva, no. 10–11 (1903): 179Google Scholar.

61. Ge, Nikolai, “Vrubel΄,” Mir Iskusstva, no. 10–11 (1903): 186Google Scholar.

62. Iaremich, Stepan, “Freski Vrubel΄ia v Kirillovskoi Tserkvi v Kieve (1884–1885),” Mir Iskusstva, no. 10–11 (1903): 188Google Scholar.

63. Notably, Adrian Prakhov, Vrubel΄’s patron in Kiev, sent the painter to Venice in preparation for this commission.

64. The use of models and expressly realistic details in the depiction of Biblical subjects was also common among the Pre-Raphaelites, for example, in Holman Hunt’s The Shadow of Death (1870–73, Manchester City Art Gallery) or Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents (1849–50, Tate Gallery). The unabashed realism of the latter aroused public indignation and none other than Charles Dickens vigorously excoriated Millais for painting Christ as “[a] hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy in a bed gown” and Mary as “so horrible in her ugliness, that . . . she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or in the lowest ginshop in England.” See Dickens, Charles, “Old Lamps for New Ones,” Household Words 12 (June 15, 1850), 12–14Google Scholar.

65. Isdebsky-Pritchard, Aline, The Art of Mikhail Vrubel, 1856–1910 (Ann Arbor, 1982), 73Google Scholar.

66. Solov΄ev, “Three Meetings,” trans. Ralph Koprince in The Silver Age of Russian Culture, 128. Emphasis added; [“Один лишь образ женской красоты”], Solov΄ev, “Tri Svidania” in Smysl lubvi: Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 454.

67. Ram, Harsha, “Decadent Nationalism, ‘Peripheral’ Modernism: The Georgian Literary Manifesto between Symbolism and the Avant-garde,” Modernism/Modernity 21, no. 1 (2014): 343–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. Alma-Tadema is often associated with later developments in Pre-Raphaelitism. See M. A. Vrubel΄ to his sister Anna, September–October 1883; M. A. Vrubel΄ to Vassilii Savinskii, March–April 1883, in Vrubel΄: Perepiska, 43, 74–75.

69. I am referring here to Sharp’s analysis of Natal΄ia Goncharova’s art and the painter’s forceful attempt to proclaim independence from western art at her 1913 solo exhibit: “All parties, critics, and the public understood that although she might declare Western European modernism ‘outlived,’ the exhibition proved beyond all doubt that she spoke as one of its key exponents.” See Sharp, Jane Ashton, Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal΄ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-garde (New York, 2006), 1Google Scholar.

70. Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic, 125.

71. Blok to Solov΄ev, Sergei, April 1903, “Perepiska Bloka s S.M. Solov΄evym (1896–1915)” in Aleksandr Blok: Novye materialy i issledovania, eds. Lavrov, A.V. and Kontrelev, N. V. (Moscow, 1980), 333Google Scholar.

72. Rossetti, William Michael, The P.R.B. Journal: Diary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood 1849–1853 Together With Other Pre-Raphaelite Documents, ed. Fredeman, William E. (Oxford, Eng., 1975), 3Google Scholar.

73. Blok, Aleksandr, “Kraski i slova,” in Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, ed. Dudin, M. A., Orlov, V. N., and Surkov, A. A. (Leningrad, 1982), 4:8Google Scholar.

74. Polina Dimova, “The Poet of Fire: Aleksandr Skriabin’s Synaesthetic Symphony ‘Prometheus’ and the Russian Symbolist Poetics of Light,” EScholarship, University of California, published March 8, 2009, at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/25b624gd (accessed March 18, 2017).

75. Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites, 48.

76. For further discussion of zhiznetvorchestvo, see Matich, Erotic Utopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia’s Fin-de-siècle, 6–7; and Paperno, introduction to Irina Paperno and Joan Delaney Grossman, eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism, 1–3.

77. As opposed to Lady Lilith (1867)—“Body’s Beauty.” See Craig Faxon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 203.

78. Craig Faxon, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 197.

79. Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic, 130.

80. Jenifer Presto remarks that Blok’s Italian Verses convincingly demonstrate that the poet’s “artistic tastes were informed by those of Ruskin and the other Pre-Raphaelites.” See Presto, Beyond the Flesh Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius, and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex (Madison, 2009), 73.

81. Blok, Aleksandr, “Lightning Flashes of Art” in Aleksandr Blok: The Journey to Italy, trans. Vogel, L. E. (Ithaca, 1973), 233Google Scholar, [Умри, Флоренция, Иуда, / Исчезни в сумрак вековой! / Я в час любви тебя забуду, / В час смерти буду не с тобой!], Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:122.

82. One cannot help but remember the prologue to William Morris’s epic poem The Earthly Paradise (1868) that in a similar way bemoans the London that is no more: Forget six counties overhung with smoke / Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke / Forget the spreading of the hideous town / Think rather of the pack-horse on the down / And dream of London, small, and white, and clean / The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green; Morris, William, The Earthly Paradise: A Poem (London, 1890), 3Google Scholar.

83. Treuherz, Prettejohn, and Becker, eds., Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 82.

84. Blok, “Lightning Flashes of Art” in Aleksandr Blok: The Journey to Italy, trans. L. E. Vogel, 257; [Темноликий ангел с дерзкой ветвью / Молвит: «Здравствуй! Ты полна красы!» / И она дрожит пред страстной вестью, / С плеч упали тяжких две косы. / Он поет и шепчет—ближе, ближе, / Уж над ней—шумящих крыл шатер . . . / И она без сил склоняет ниже /Потемневший, помутневший взор ], . . . Blok, Sobranie Sochinenii, 2:129–130.

85. Solov΄ev, Sergei, Pis΄ma Aleksandra Bloka (Leningrad, 1925), 64Google Scholar; Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic, 131.

86. Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism, 185.

87. “Trouble is beating its wings” (Krylami b΄et beda), a line in the fifth stanza of “The Scythians,” is an allusion to a similar metaphor in the “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign,” Blok, Sobranie Sochinenii, 2:253.

88. Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism, 218.

89. Calinescu, Matei, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC, 1987), 41Google Scholar.

90. Blakesley, The Russian Canvas Painting in Imperial Russia, 1757–1881, 256.