Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Born – London, England 1828
Died – Birchington-on-sea, England 1882
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the son of a Dante scholar and the brother of poet Christina Rossetti. Prodigiously talented as a poet and painter, Rossetti received tuition from John Sell Cotman, before studying under Holman Hunt from 1848. In the same year, Rossetti, with Millais and Holman Hunt founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. However, Rossetti’s essentially romantic imagination set him apart from the earnest and more literal endeavours of the other two and their mutual association was short-lived. Between 1850 and 1860 he worked mainly in watercolour, and pen and ink, choosing to depict medieval subjects. Beata Beatrix is an idealized, spiritual and symbolic portrait of Rossetti’s beautiful wife, Elizabeth Siddal. The couple married in 1860 but she died tragically two years later of narcotic abuse. Rossetti’s haunting memorial to his dead wife is expressed through a parallel with the story of Dante and Beatrice. His later paintings on Arthurian and Dantesque themes used Jane Morris, wife of William Morris, as his model. With their pale, intense faces and luxurious hair, both Elizabeth and Jane represented, for Rossetti, an ideal of feminine beauty that came to define the notion of archetypal Pre-Raphaelite women.
Masterpieces:
- Girlhood of Mary Virgin
- Found
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About dante gabriel rossetti
The House Of Life
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Collected Poetry and Prose
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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