In an Artist's Studio Summary & Analysis
by Christina Rossetti

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Christina Rossetti wrote "In an Artist's Studio" in 1856, but it wasn't published until 1896, two years after Rossetti's death. In this reflective sonnet, a speaker visits an artist's studio and finds a vast collection of portraits, all depicting the same gorgeous model. But the speaker knows this model personally—and while these pictures capture this woman's beautiful youth, they ignore the deep sadness of her present-day life. Caught up in his model's idealized loveliness, the artist seems to have missed (or disregarded) the "sorrow" of the living woman in front of him. This is a poem about objectification: in seeing his model only as a beautiful dream-girl, the artist overlooks her humanity.

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