Ligeia Siren

Ligeia Siren (1873) in pastel engages with the mythology of the Sirens through the name Ligeia, one of the Siren sisters in classical tradition. The Siren as a figure of fatal female beauty combined Rossetti's femme fatale iconography with the natural world of the sea and the supernatural world of myth, creating a hybrid attractive to the Aesthetic Movement's interest in figures poised between human and elemental existence. Pastel allowed Rossetti to achieve the cool, pearlescent tones associated with sea and water — pale blues, greens, and whites — while maintaining the rich warm color of the hair and flesh that anchored the figure as human rather than purely supernatural. The work belongs to the same moment as his Proserpine series, when Rossetti was most intensively developing mythological female types.

Pastel's textural softness suits the Siren's ambiguous status between human and elemental — the medium's powdery quality can suggest both the softness of flesh and the iridescence of sea-creature scales or sea-spray.