Recognized by history as an inspired but provocative nonconformist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti made
his name initially as a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood challenged the "decadent" indulgences of the day by looking for inspiration
and religious guidance in medieval art.
Rather than produce dramatic historical narratives (as was the fashion of the day), The Brotherhood
adhered to an inflexible set of puritanical and aesthetic standards of which Rossetti
soon tired.
He continued to paint his mythical parables with the same luminosity and attention to
the finest picture detail, but Rossetti, who harboured longings to be recognised also the
poet, became all-consumed with the idea of female beauty.
His licentious lifestyle, though condemned by many of his colleagues, breathed erotic
life, and it must be said, genuine personality, into his art.
But with time, his destructive lifestyle led to his mental decline, but as often happens
with after some time, this merely enhanced his legend as a prodigious maverick of the
Victorian age.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - A leading light in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The son of émigré Italian scholar Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti and his wife Frances
Mary Lavinia Polidori, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in London in 1828.
During his childhood, Rossetti was home educated and often read the Bible, along with the works
of Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott and Lord Byron.
As a youth he was self-possessed, articulate, passionate and charismatic.
At first, he aspired to be a poet and attended King's College School, near the Strand in
London.
However, he also had an interest in art, especially in the Medieval Italian masters.
He studied at Henry Sass' Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845, when he enrolled in the
Antique School of the Royal Academy.
After leaving the Royal Academy in 1848, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown, with whom
he retained a close relationship throughout his life.
Following the exhibition of William Holman Hunt's painting The Eve of St. Agnes, Rossetti
sought out his friendship.
The painting illustrated a poem by the little-known John Keats.
Rossetti's own poem, The Blessed Damozel, was an imitation of Keats, and he believed
Hunt would share his artistic and literary ideals.
Together they developed the philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which was
founded with John Everett Millais.
The group's intention was to reform English art by rejecting what they considered to be
the mechanistic approach first adopted by the Mannerist artists that succeeded Raphael
and Michelangelo and the formal training regime introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Their approach was to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions
of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.
1, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.
Housed in the Tate Gallery, London, the early oil painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin was
completed in 1849 and depicts the Virgin Mary as a young girl, working on embroidery with
her mother, St. Anne.
Her father, St. Joachim can be seen in the background pruning a vine.
The painting provides many symbolic details, with the palm branch on the floor and thorny
briar rose on the wall alluding to Christ’s Passion, the lilies to the Virgin’s purity
and the books piled on the left foreground represent the virtues of hope, faith and charity.
The dove on the trellis symbolises the Holy Spirit.
The canvas was Rossetti’s first completed oil painting and the first picture to be exhibited
with the initials ‘PRB’, relating to the ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’, inscribed
in the lower left-hand corner.
In a letter dated 14th November 1848 to Charles Lyell, Rossetti described the work as belonging
“to the religious class which has always appeared to me the most adapted and the most
worthy to interest the members of a Christian community.
The subject is the education of the Blessed Virgin, one which has been treated at various
times by Murillo and other painters, but, as I cannot but think, in a very inadequate
manner, since they have invariably represented her as reading from a book under the superintendence
of her Mother, St. Anne, an occupation obviously incompatible with these times, and which could
only pass muster if treated in a purely symbolical manner.
In order, therefore, to attempt something more probable and at the same time less commonplace,
I have represented the future Mother of Our Lord as occupied in embroidering a lily, always
under the direction of St. Anne.”
Lake Galilee is portrayed in the background as a landscape in the style of fifteenth century
Italian art.
Rossetti also inscribed the names of his subjects within their halos, perhaps demonstrating
the influence of the work of Benozzo Gozzoli — an artist before the time of Raphael.
Rossetti had formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood the previous year in 1848 with his two friends
and fellow artists William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
The group’s intention was to reform art by rejecting what it considered the mechanistic
approach first adopted by Mannerist artists that had succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo.
The members of the ‘PRB’ believed the Classical poses and elegant compositions of
Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art,
hence their adoption of the name “Pre-Raphaelite”.
In particular, the group objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the
English Royal Academy of Arts, whom they ridiculed as “Sir Sloshua”.
The members of the brotherhood yearned instead for a return to the abundant detail, intense
colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian art.
The group associated their work with John Ruskin, an English artist whose influences
were driven by his religious background.
Through the PRB initials, as found on The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, the brotherhood had
announced in coded form the arrival of a new movement in British art.
2, Ecce Ancilla Domini: The Annunciation.
Completed in 1850 and now on permanent display in Tate Britain, this oil painting is based
on a traditional theme in western art, known as the Annunciation, concerning when the angel
Gabriel announces to Mary that she will be giving birth to the son of God.
The canvas is given a Latin title: Ecce Ancilla Domini (‘Behold the handmaiden of the Lord’),
which is a quotation from the Vulgate text of the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint
Luke, when Mary accepts the message brought to her by Gabriel.
Rossetti deliberately used a limited colour range for the painting, favouring a predominance
of white, symbolic of virginity, complemented by the vibrant blue that is traditionally
associated with Mary, and red for Christ’s blood.
Lilies were also a customary symbol for the Virgin in Italian Renaissance art, but they
are also considered as funereal flowers, indicative of Christ’s death.
The artist’s sister, Christina Rossetti, later to become a famous poet in her own right,
posed for Mary in this painting, as she did in the previous canvas.
In both paintings, Rossetti opted to change the model’s hair colour, choosing an auburn
tint instead, in order to build upon the red palette.
Miss Love, a professional model used by several members of the PRB in their work, provided
the hair seen in the image.
The artist’s brother William posed for Gabriel.
The canvas was first exhibited in April 1850 at the Old Portland Gallery on Regent Street
and received mixed reviews, causing controversy with some critics.
The most obvious break from tradition was the placing of Mary in bed, wearing a long
nightgown suggestive of a newly-wed bride, as she is awoken by the angel.
Typically in Annunciation paintings Mary is depicted in a more ‘saintly’ manner, praying
or in divine meditation, but Rossetti’s portrayal of the mother of Christ is much
more realistic and rustic.
Another contentious issue was Gabriel’s lack of wings and his suggested nakedness,
glimpsed through the side of his robe.
Francis McCracken, a well known Pre-Raphaelite patron, bought the canvas in 1853 for £50
and the Tate Gallery purchased the work in 1886.
3, First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice.
This 1853 watercolour concerns a scene depicted in Dante Aligiheri’s La Vita nuova, when
the poet recalls how he drew an angel on the anniversary of the death of his beloved Beatrice.
The Florentine goes on to explain how he had not realised that whilst he was lost in his
grief, some friends had entered the room, whom he should have greeted courteously.
Arising, the poet said for a greeting, “Another was with me.”
Throughout his literary and artistic career, Rossetti was fascinated by the works of his
literary namesake.
The poetry treatise tells the story of Dante’s infatuation and holy love for Beatrice Portinari,
a young Florentine noble woman.
Rossetti had begun translating the work into English in 1845 and published the entire book
in The Early Italian Poets.
Many of Rossetti’s finest early achievements in poetry and painting are based on works
by the early Renaissance poet.
In the painting the face of the young woman belongs to Lizzie Siddal, an early model of
Rossetti’s, whom he later married in 1860.
Siddal went on to become a talented artist herself, winning the respect and patronage
of Ruskin.
Through the window to the right, we can glimpse the River Arno and a complementing blue palette,
whilst to the left, through the doorway, we can see a medieval garden with vibrant green
hues, all helping to complement the dark tones of the interior scene.
Unlike similar watercolours by Rossetti during the 1850s, The First Anniversary of the Death
of Beatrice is well-organised in terms of spatial treatment, offering a less ‘cluttered’
work, which is well-balanced and rich in visual detail.
It is an important canvas, as when it was purchased by Francis MacCracken, she showed
it to the art critic John Ruskin, who at once requested to meet the artist.
Ruskin would become a leading supporter of the Pre-Raphaelites and his early commissions
gave Rossetti much needed financial support.
4, The Seed of David.
Begun in 1858 and completed six years later in 1864, this triptych panel is the only public
commission undertaken by Rossetti, which was secured for him by John Seddon, the brother
of Thomas Seddon, a fellow member of the PRB, who died in Cairo in 1856.
John Seddon was an architect working on Llandaff Cathedral and commissioned Rossetti £400
to produce the altarpiece.
The central panel of the triptych represents an Adoration of the Magi scene, flanked by
two representations of David: the left showing him as a boy, sling in hand; the right portraying
him as crowned king.
As the artist explained in a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, written in 1858, when his conception
of the triptych was taking form, he intended to paint “the Nativity; for the side pieces
to which I have David as Shepherd and David as King — the ancestor of Christ, embodying
in his own person the shepherd and king who are seen worshipping in the Nativity.”
Rossetti symbolically links David and Christ through the dual nature of shepherd and king,
depicting David as a shepherd on the left, whilst portraying Christ in the centre being
worshiped by both shepherds and kings.
The altarpiece illustrates the artist’s admiration for the works of Sandro Botticelli,
whose Mystic Nativity contains similar angel musicians.
A year after completing the triptych, Rossetti purchased a Botticelli portrait from a Christies
auction for £20, which he kept until a year before his death, selling it then for £315.
5, Bocca Baciata.
This 1859 canvas heralds Rossetti’s breakaway from the PRB and his preference for portraits
of beautiful women, being no longer concerned with moral or cultural subjects.
The painting features a quotation from the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, which is
inscribed on the back of the small painting and reads, “The mouth that has been kissed
loses not its freshness; still it renews itself even as does the moon.”
The model for the portrait was Fanny Cornforth, who came from Steyning in East Sussex, and
the portrait was commissioned by George Price Boyd, who was notorious for his fondness for
beautiful young models.
Bocca Baciata may have been influenced by Millais’ portrait of his sister-in-law Sophie
Gray, completed two years earlier.
Rossetti explained in a letter to William Bell Scott that he was attempting to paint
flesh more fully, and to “avoid what I know to be a besetting fault of mine - & indeed
rather common to PR painting - that of stipple in the flesh...Even among the old good painters,
their portraits and simpler pictures are almost always their masterpieces for colour and execution;
and I fancy if one kept this in view, one might have a better chance of learning to
paint at last.”