The Semantics of the Gaze: Fazio’s Mistress in Fazio Degli Uberti’s and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Representations

Małgorzata Wronka-Szybko

doi:10.5604/01.3001.0015.2038

Authors

Małgorzata Wronka-Szybko Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7044-2099

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5604/01.3001.0015.2038

Keywords:

gaze, Fazio Degli Uberti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Fazio’s Mistress, Aurelia

Abstract

The intention of this paper is to discuss the act of (not) looking with respect to the fourteenth-century Italian poem His Portrait of His Lady, Angiola of Verona written by Fazio Degli Uberti, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting Fazio’s Mistress (Aurelia). The works chosen for this analysis seem to represent social conventions and expectations related to gender and sexuality. Both in the case of the painting and the poem, the gaze is a medium of becoming a “surveyor” and “surveyed”, a means of typecasting, but also a reservoir of changing meanings. In the following discussion, the author approaches Uberti’s and Rossetti’s works in attempt to see how (and if) they renounce traditional views on domination and submission.

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