ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the intertext of Astarte to suggest something of the material and spiritual fusion that informs Rossetti's work and its endeavor to reconcile the original and the copy through the word and the image. The sonnet begins and ends, as noted, with the word 'mystery', and describes the situation of the painted woman physically placed 'betwixt' the sun and the moon in both symbolic and material terms. Armstrong suggests that while Pater's assessment of Rossetti's poetry is astute, the poetry itself cannot 'sustain' the fusion of spirit and matter he suggests it does. The chapter suggests that while Rossetti's poetry itself struggle to realize Pater's harmonious fusion of spirit and matter, in relationship between words and images, a 'commensurateness', albeit an unstable one, is realized. One might argue that there are in fact four portraits of Jane Morris in this painting: the two faces evident in the Astarte herself, and the two attendants who closely resemble the deity.
