[25] In England, around 1850, the energy of Romanticism was channeled by a spirited brotherhood of artists. Turning away from the frenzy of the Industrial Age and inspired by the dreamy medieval world before the great Renaissance painter Raphael, they called themselves…the Pre-Raphaelites.

[26, The Lady of Shalott (Waterhouse), The Bride (Rossetti), The Mirror of Venus (Burne-Jones)] The Pre-Raphaelites reveled in medieval damsels, mythical goddesses, and legendary lovers…all immersed in the fertile serenity of nature, captured in radiant colors and luminous clarity. They created melancholy visions of pure beauty.

[27, Ophelia, 1852, Millais, Tate Gallery, London] In this quintessential Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece, tragic Ophelia, who's fallen while picking a garland of wildflowers, is singing before she drowns. Her body, open and skyward, is somewhere between saintly and sensual…and the nature engulfing her is so fertile while decaying at the same time. So pale in contrast to the richness of nature, she had finally found happiness on the verge of death.