The Pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais painted Ophelia in London between 1851 and 1852, and it is now on display at the Tate Gallery in London.

The artist painted Ophelia in two different moments. Millais creates the background en plein air, inspired by the vegetation of Ewell (a place where he lived for five months, working on the canvas for eleven hours a day). The artist left a white space in the center incomplete. This is to insert Ophelia, impersonated by the model and poet Elizabeth Siddal.

Ophelia, lying in a stream, is covered in flowers.

A tragic story

Elizabeth Siddal, the future wife of Millais’ friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was the model who interpreted Ophelia. Millais had the model immersed in the bath of his apartment in Gower Street, London, to faithfully reproduce the drowning and achieve the effect of the dress swelling when submerged in water. This led Elizabeth to fall ill with terrible bronchitis, which permanently affected her health.

Ophelia as a Shakespearean character

The play portrays Ophelia, a key character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The girl’s love for Hamlet makes her a victim of this because Ophelia believes that Hamlet does not return her feelings. He will negate his love for her in order not to involve her in Uncle Claudius’ petty affairs.

Later, Ophelia becomes insane as Hamlet, the man she loves, kills her father. The girl will then slip into a stream, and so taken by grief and madness, she lets herself drown.

The Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood

Millais was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. That was an artistic association related to the Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements, which flourished in Great Britain during the Victorian age. The term “Pre-Raphaelites” takes its name from the Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio.

According to these artists, the Arts before him lived a flourishing and genuine period. After him, Art became polluted and corrupt. In fact, the Pre-Raphaelites aimed to reject the models of Victorian art, embracing the customs and traditions of a nostalgic past. The themes addressed by these artists included biblical, literary, fairy-tale, historical, and social aspects, with a particular focus on migration and labor.

Melancholia, depression, and destruction

Millais’ Ophelia’s death is mentioned, as a proper homage to the painter and Shakespeare’s literary work, in the film Melancholia. It’s a 2011 film, a drama-fantasy movie written and directed by Lars von Trier. The film was presented for the Palme d’Or at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Kirsten Dunst, who portrayed the main character Justine, received the award for best female lead actress.

In the film poster, Justine, lying in a stream in her wedding dress, plays the role of Ophelia. Symbol of love, defeated by pain. The film tells the story of two sisters, Justine and Claire. Their relationship is analyzed as Earth is threatened by the planet Melancholia.

Melancholia is a metaphor for depression, the disease from which Justine suffers. The director has also suffered from the same disease. So this episode has drawn strong inspiration for the creation of the film. The play on words between the name of the planet, Melancholia, and Justine’s pathology creates parallels between depression and the end of the world. Just as Melancholia is going to crash down upon the Earth and destroy it, so depression is going to destroy the lives of the people who suffer from this pathology, and their families. Because for many families, depression represents the end of the world.

Melancholy, philosophers, planets, and artists

Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile are the four humors that compose the human psyche, according to the Greeks. The excess of black bile could generate melancholia. Aristotle argues in the Problems that “All extraordinary men excellent in philosophy, politics, poetry, and the arts are manifestly melancholic”. Marsilio Ficino resumed Aristotle’s thought in 1489 in his work De vita triplici.

A gift of men born under the planet Saturn was melancholy, but this was not always the case. In the beginning, Mercury was the planet of artists, the earth of the God Hermes, creator of the arts. The change came with the revaluation of Ficino. So, from then on, the “saturnine temperament”, which is dark and reflective, melancholic, became a characteristic of artists.

Melancholy, however, can lead to negative consequences, can produce anxiety attacks, and depression. The latter can prove fatal, as in the case of Elizabeth Siddal. The poetess, in addition to health problems caused by bronchitis, suffered from intense depression, caused by the loss of her son. In the end, the model and the subject of Millais’ painting share the same fate: like Ophelia for the pain of her father’s death, Elizabeth also committed suicide. For Elizabeth, too, love, defeated by grief, turned into fatal madness.