Our eye is not automatically guided to the human figures but is forced to wander over the microscopic detail. Color is unshaded and applied in separate cells, as in Byzantine mosaic or Gautier's gorgeous color units. Flowers and blades of grass are brilliantly lapidary, the paint surface so richly worked that there is only a single step from Pre-Raphaelite naturism to Gustave Moreau's Decadent jewelled artifice. Everything in Pre-Raphaelite painting is seen too clearly . The eye is invited but coerced.
Part triumphs over whole, exerting an uncomfortable pressure on the viewer.
Landscape has an unnatural stillness , making it a Decadent frozen tableau. Sunlit panoramas are locked in Decadent closure, a Spenserian embowerment. Pre-Raphaelite painting deadens even as it celebrates. Persons and things are candied, mummified, miniaturized. The Pre-Raphaelites revived Blake, who had died unknown.