Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Delphi Complete Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Illustrated)

(1828-1882)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2014

Version 1

Masters of Art Series

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

By Delphi Classics, 2014

Masters of Art - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2014.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 91063 056 3

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

www.delphiclassics.com

Interested in Rossettis art? Then youll love these eBooks

Rossettis Complete Poetical Works, as well as the Complete Poetry of his sister Christina Rossetti and his close friend Algernon Charles Swinburne

For the first time in publishing history, Delphi Classics is proud to present the complete works of these important poets.

www.delphiclassics.com

38 Charlotte Street (now 105 Hallam Street), London Rossettis birthplace

Dante Gabriel Rossettis painting of his sister Christina with their mother, Frances Polidori, who was the sister of Lord Byrons friend and physician, John William Polidori

The poets father, Gabriele Rossetti, a poet and political exile from Vasto, Abruzzo

Self portrait of Rossetti, aged 19

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, aged 22, by William Holman Hunt

THE HIGHLIGHTS

In this section, a sample of some of Rossettis most celebrated works are provided, with concise introductions, special detail reproductions and additional biographical images.

The son of migr 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.

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 Christs Passion, the lilies to the Virgins 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 Rossettis 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 14 th 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.