Seven Dante Gabriel Rossetti Prints, Nightlife "Dinner" Recolours

Title

Seven Dante Gabriel Rossetti Prints, Nightlife "Sent to My Room Without Dinner" Recolours


Description

The Nightlife expansion is particularly useful for its diversity of picture formats. This Rossetti collection is based on the "Sent to My Room Without Dinner" object which provides an aspect ratio 0.51 (i.e. width to height), the lowest of the entire Sims 2 commercial distribution. "Dinner" costs §900, and has an Environment value of 6.

These paintings are distributed in rossetti_dinner.zip, as follows:

In this first group, all of religious subjects, the picture on the left is of a relatively conventional "Annunciation" (1861), but even in this Rossetti takes care with both the simplicity of the characters' appearance and the symbolic eloquence of the setting.

In the middle, the tall and narrow "Damsel of the Sanct Grael" (1857) or "Holy Grail", presents a stylized medieval version of the popular myth.

In the third image we see another depiction of the annunciation, but this one with an unconventional treatment. One of Rossetti's very first works in oil, "Ecce Ancilla Domini!" (1849-50), Latin for "Behold the handmaid of the Lord", depicts the visit of the Angel Gabriel to a Mary who is "an emaciated and repressed teenage girl" (as Wikipedia puts it) cowering on her bed in fear. This boldly honest realism was typical of the early Pre-Raphaelites, scandalizing the majority of Victorians, but speaking to us with a timeless spirituality.


On the left, Princess Parisadi carries a black barrel of "Golden Water" (1858), in an illustration for The Arabian Nights.

On the right, "Lucrezia Borgia" (1861) is symbolic of a manipulative femme fatale. This particular image gave me great difficulty in converting it for the Sims 2 - I spent more time here than the rest of the collection combined, in part because the source image was not up to the Art Renewal Center's usual high standards. I am still not particularly happy with the result, but it may be useful for some dark corner!


The last pair present two versions of the eight "Proserpine" (Persephone) canvases that Rossetti worked on in his lifetime. Perhaps his most popular and recognizable picture, the 1874 image on the left is very rich and fluid, stunning in its portrayal of Jane Morris, the lover, model and muse of Rossetti's later years. But the more stark and ethereal 1882 version on the right has its own fascination, this time combining Jane's features with the image of his long dead wife Elizabeth Siddal's fiery red hair. This portrait was Rossetti's very last, completed a few days before his death.

These images are all in the public domain. If I remember correctly, the first four are from The Athenaeum and the last three from the Art Renewal Center. Each was reduced in size from the originals without dimensional distortion, and with matting used to fill out the aspect ratio where necessary. As usual, SimPE was used to set reflectivity to zero for maximum clarity. You may include these recolours in any uploaded lots, whether for free or pay - but it would be nice if you included a credit in the description and sent me a PM. I would prefer that you not upload these files elsewhere, if only because such duplication can cause confusion.


Additional Credits:

SimPE 6.0, the primary tool!
Corel WEB.PhotoPaint, for picture frame manipulation and texturing
Microsoft Photo Editor, for adjusting contrast, brightness and size
Senesi2003's tiny ceiling light, great for the unobtrusive illumination of the sample pictures
Attribute Change 5.30 is very useful for adjusting a file's date and timestamp, used to put the recolours together in consecutive order, with the most recent recolour being the one furthest to the left. Thus the paintings are arranged in alphabetical order within the catalogue popup display from right to left.