How to Read Paintings: Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The tragic heroine who ate a forbidden fruit
Published in
6 min readApr 23, 2021
This figure represents Proserpine (known as Persephone to the Greeks), daughter of Ceres (also known as Demeter — goddess of agriculture). Here Proserpine holds a pomegranate in her hand, from which she has taken a single bite and in doing so has secured her fate as a prisoner of the…
