Image: Christoph Niemann
[ed. Great illustration.]
"What’s extraordinary is that, when John Everett Millais came to paint his version of “Mariana,” twenty-one years later, he pushed the legend—derived from “Measure for Measure”—to a further stage. The lonesome woman, pining for her paramour, is depicted in a dress of midnight blue, stretching, with her breast uplifted and her hands at the base of her spine; the posture is a kind of pun, expressing both fatigue (that is how we all like to stretch, at the close of a working day) and a physical craving yet more intense. The death wish is entangled with desire."
Image: John Everett Millais, Mariana (Wikipedia)
