Ode to a Memory

Mary Magdalene by Frederick Sandys

I remember visiting the San Diego Museum of Art (Balboa Park), in the summer of 2007 to see "Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum." I sat for hours with notebook in hand, sketching and taking notes on the works of Rossetti, Hunt and Millais; paying tribute to a bygone era.

Their rebellion looked back instead of forward. A group of seven artists and writers who yearned for medieval expression, banded together and took on a new identity: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. They created a fanciful world pieced together from the past and inhabited by pale-skinned sulking beauties crowned with endless billowing locks and Pre-Renaissance fashion.