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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882)

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Originally appearing in Volume V23, Page 751 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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DANTE See also:GABRIEL See also:ROSSETTI (1828-1882)  , See also:English poet and painter, whose full baptismal name was See also:Gabriel See also:Charles See also:Dante, was See also:born on the 12th of May 1828, at 38 See also:Charlotte See also:Street, See also:Portland See also:Place, See also:London . He was the first of the two sons and the second of the four See also:children of Gabriele See also:Rossetti (1783-18J4), an See also:Italian poet and liberal, who, about 1824, after many vicissitudes connected with the See also:part he played in the See also:Naples reform See also:movement against See also:Ferdinand I., came to See also:England, where he married in 1826 Frances See also:Mary Polidori (d . 1886), See also:sister of See also:Byron's physician, Dr See also:John Polidori, and daughter of a Tuscan, Gaetano Polidori, who had in See also:early youth been See also:Alfieri's secretary and who had married an English See also:lady . In 1831 he became See also:professor of Italian in See also:King's See also:College, London, and afterwards achieved a recognized position as a subtle and See also:original, if See also:eccentric, commentator on Dante . In 1852 he published a See also:volume of Italian religious poems . His See also:family, besides Dante Gabriel, consisted of Maria Francesca (1827-1876), who eventually entered an See also:Anglican sisterhood—she is known to Dante scholars by her valuable See also:Shadow of Dante; See also:William See also:Michael (b . 1829), a well-known See also:man of letters who from 1845 to 1894 was in the Inland See also:Revenue See also:Office—he married a daughter of See also:Ford Madox See also:Brown; and See also:Christina (q.v.), the poet . The See also:literary spirit was strongly entrenched here; and the See also:talent which was always distinguished in William Michael See also:rose to the height of rare See also:genius in Dante Gabriel and Christina . Dante Rossetti's See also:education was begun at a private school in See also:Foley Street, Portland Place, where he remained, however, only nine months, from the autumn of 1835 to the summer of 1836 . He next went (in the autumn of 1836) to King's College School, where he remained till the summer of 1843, having reached the See also:fourth class . From early childhood he had displayed a marked propensity for See also:drawing and See also:painting . It had there-fore from the first been tacitly assumed that his future career would be an See also:artistic one, and he See also:left school early .

In Latin, however, he was already fairly proficient for his See also:

age; See also:French he knew well; Italian he had spoken from childhood, and he had some See also:German lessons about 1844-45 . But, although he learned enough German to be able to translate the Arnie Heinrich of See also:Hartmann von Aue, and some portions of the See also:Nibelungenlied, he afterwards forgot the See also:language almost entirely . His See also:Greek too, such as it had been, he lost . On leaving school he went (1843) to See also:Cary's See also:Art See also:Academy (previously called Sass's), near See also:Bedford Square, and thence obtained See also:admission to the Royal Academy See also:Antique School towards 1846 . Of the artistic education of See also:foreign travel Rossetti had very little . But in early See also:life he made a See also:short tour in See also:Belgium, where he was indubitably much impressed and influenced by the See also:works of See also:Van See also:Eyck at See also:Ghent and Memling at See also:Bruges . [It may be convenient to interpolate here a continuous See also:account of Rossetti's career as a pictorial artist . Being much impressed by some of the early works of Ford Madox Brown exhibited at the Academy (1841), See also:Westminster See also:Hall (1844–45) and the See also:British Institution (1845), he sought from that See also:master of technique technical instruction of a more See also:direct and stringent See also:kind than he had previously submitted to . Brown, ever generous in that way, undertook without a See also:fee the training of Rossetti as a painter, and set him to See also:work upon such rudimentary studies as See also:pickle-pots and other " still-life." The See also:pupil's course of such work was, as might be expected, short; the master's example and that of See also:Millais, together with the uncompromising See also:energy of See also:Holman See also:Hunt, with both of whom Rossetti became intimate about this See also:time, helping and encouraging him . Most of all, perhaps, so far as his temporary impressions were concerned, a picture of Brown's which was shown at the " See also:Free See also:Exhibition," See also:Hyde See also:Park Corner, in the See also:spring of 1848 profoundly affected Rossetti . This was, of course, months before the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the autumn of the last-named See also:year, when five painter-students, a sculptor (See also:Thomas See also:Woolner) and a layman (W . M .

Rossetti) agreed upon certain principles they desired should obtain in art . None of the five owed the initiative of his views to any of the others or to Brown, whose impulse was purely technical and connected with Rossetti only; neither Millais, Holman Hunt, J . Collinson nor F . G . See also:

Stephens needed the help of Madox Brown . The point of Pre-Raphaelite See also:crystallization which had so See also:great though brief an See also:influence upon Rossetti's life and art was found at a See also:chance See also:meeting of Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt in Millais's See also:house in See also:Gower Street, where certain prints from early Italian frescoes were studied . The See also:enthusiasm of Rossetti led him to propose the formation of a " See also:Brother-See also:hood " with more or less definite views and much loftier aims than artists generally venture to announce . This took effect; the views of the remaining three men were already known, and in a few days they joined the new society and took their shares in the obloquy which attended the doings of Millais, Hunt and Collinson . Brown, though invited, declined to become a P-R.B . Rossetti's first effort was by means of " The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin," which in See also:March 1849 was exhibited at Hyde Park Corner . It was a picture which attested the prodigious value of his studies since the previous See also:October, and the native genius of the painter and the sincere See also:passion with which he had accepted the obligations of Pre-Raphaelitism, as they were then, but not for See also:long, understood . Nothing of his producing was more See also:independent than the inception of " The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin "; indeed the See also:design for it was made some See also:half a year before the meeting in Gower Street, though the See also:execution of this work owed not a little to the influence, if not the actual help, of Millais and Hunt .

Its See also:

mysticism was Rossetti's own, its technique owed something to Brown . On the whole, there can be no doubt that in this work was the first pronouncement of a new view of art, a fresh technique and See also:power rapidly developing itself . Of course, the See also:style of this noteworthy and See also:epoch-marking picture was jejune, its handling was timid, while its coloration and tonality were dry, not to say thin . Such was Rossetti's See also:advent in art under the Pre-Raphaelite banner . The picture's reception was not encouraging, nor did the next work from his hands induce him to emerge from that proud exclusiveness in which all such minds as his are content to abide . The diverse moods of the other See also:Brothers See also:chose otherwise, but of Rossetti's immediate circle it has been truly said: " It appears that of seven See also:young men and Brethren five have attained eminent positions, four of them being pre-eminent, although for years after the society was formed no single member, whatever his position might be, escaped insult, obloquy and wicked and malicious misrepresentation . The more conspicuous the Brother [e.g . Millais], the more outrageously was he attacked . " No estimate of Rossetti's genius, his See also:triumph and his life as a whole can be justly based without ample See also:allowance being made for. the circumstances which attended his advent as a painter . " Ecce Ancilla Domini!" the smaller picture which is now in the See also:National See also:Gallery of British Art at Millbank, was the one perfect outcome of the original See also:motive of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by its representative and typical member . It is replete with the mystical See also:mood which then ruled the painter's mind; that mood chose what may be called See also:virginal See also:white and its harmonies as its aptest coloration, and the intense See also:light of See also:morning sufficed for its tonality . It was exhibited at the Portland Gallery in 185o .

After these pictures were finished, the outside See also:

world saw no more of Rossetti as a painter until it had prepared itself to see See also:modern art from a higher See also:plane than before . In See also:December 185o there appeared the first number of The Germ, a See also:magazine (which lasted for only four See also:numbers) in which Rossetti had a leading place as the poet in See also:verse and See also:prose . The influence of See also:Robert See also:Browning upon Rossetti was more potent in The Germ than in that splendid See also:romance in See also:water-See also:colours called " The Laboratory," where a See also:court lady of the ancien regime visits an old See also:poison-monger to obtain from him a fatal potion for her See also:rival in love . This wonderful See also:gem of See also:colour, glowing in lurid and wicked passion and voluptuous See also:suggestion, marked the opening of the artist's second See also:period and signalized his departure from that phase of Pre-Raphaelitism of which " Ecce Ancilla Domini ! " was the crowning achievement, and, so far as he was concerned, the artistic ne plus ultra . Millais and the other Brothers remained faithful during several years yet to come . Later in 1850, Rossetti produced the original, which is in See also:ink, of the famous "Hesterna See also:Rosa," a gambling See also:scene of men and their mistresses in a See also:tent by lamplight, while pallid See also:dawn gathers force between the trees without . Then came from his hands " See also:Borgia," which, like " The Laboratory," is in water-colours, and, like " Hesterna Rosa," is a sardonic tragedy . " How they met Themselves " came next, and, in illustrating a See also:legend similar to that of the Doppelganger, affirmed the force, the originality and the tragic passion of Rossetti's genius . Two lovers are walking in a -See also:twilight See also:wood, where they are confronted suddenly by their See also:apparitions, portending See also:death . The year 1852 produced " See also:Giotto painting Dante's Portrait," and saw a new development of the painter's mind and mood, dashed with a See also:humour not often to be seen in him . In its somewhat dry coloration it differed from the ardent See also:jewel-like glow and deeper gloom of " Borgia " and its successor and the sumptuous visions of womanhood in later pictures .

" Found," Rossetti's See also:

sole contribution of the sort which Mr Holman Hunt affected, was begun somewhere about this period; but this piece of pictorial moralizing (the analogue of the poet's own " Jenny "), vigorous and intensely pathetic as it is, was never really finished by its author, being, indeed, far remote from Rossetti's inner self, which was rather over-scornful of didactic art, and thoroughly indisposed towards attempts to ameliorate anybody's See also:condition by means of pictures . Nor did the stringency of naturalistic painting suit his mood or his experience . Nevertheless, what is his in the existing picture remains a masterpiece of See also:poetry with exquisitely finished parts . Passing a few See also:fine but comparatively unimportant drawings,such as " See also:Lancelot and Guinevere at the See also:Tomb of See also:Arthur," " Lancelot looking at the Dead Lady of Shalott," " See also:Mariana of the See also:South," " See also:Sir Galahad," " The See also:Blue Closet," and various works owing subjects to the Arthurian See also:cycle of romances, we may See also:note that the artist illustrated by five cuts Poems by See also:Alfred See also:Tennyson, on which Millais and Mr 'Holman Hunt were also engaged, and which was published by See also:Moxon in 1857 . As in "Ecce Ancilla Domini!" we had virginal white and morning light employed to strengthen the mystical significance of the design, so in " Borgia " Venetian voluptuousness and sensuous splendours obtained, and in " The Blue Closet " is a very potent and suggestive exercise intended to symbolize the association of colour with See also:music . The last is one of the subtlest of the artist's "inventions," and it shows how he had See also:developed upon " Borgia " an artistic sympathy which is but too likely to be " See also:caviare to the See also:general." " The See also:Wedding of St See also:George " is not so fine; nor was " Lancelot's See also:Dream of the Sangreal," Rossetti's part in the luckless decorations of the See also:Oxford See also:Union' (1857—58); nor are " Guinevere and Sir Lancelot," " Galahad in the See also:Chapel " and other Arthurian examples quite worthy of his art . " Bocca Baciata," the super-sensuous portrait of a woman, a work of wonderful See also:fire, and the pictures on the See also:pulpit at See also:Llandaff See also:Cathedral, marked the expiration of the second epoch in Rossetti's art and the beginning of a new, the third, last and most powerful of all the phases of his career . The picture " Dr See also:Johnson at the See also:Mitre," when the " See also:pretty See also:fools " consulted the lexicographer anent See also:Methodism, is a See also:good example of his humour . In 1861 Rossetti produced several fine designs for stained See also:glass, and in the revival of stained-glass painting as an art he had a larger See also:share than has frequently been ascribed to him . The practice of designing upon a large See also:scale, and employment of masses of splendid though deep-toned colours, had probably something to do with the prodigious development of his See also:powers and the enlargement of his views as regards painting which took effect at this period (1862—63) . At this time a striking and highly imaginative See also:triptych, representing three events in the careers of See also:Paolo and Francesca, was produced; it is a great improvement upon an earlier design . There is unprecedented energy in the See also:group of the lovers embracing in the See also:garden-house just as they have paused in See also:reading the fatal romance .

The See also:

composition of this group, with the circular window behind their figures, is as fine as it was comparatively novel in Rossetti's. practice . Its lurid coloration was so thoroughly in See also:harmony with the pathos of the subject that in this respect the work excelled all the painter had previously produced . The same elements, energy, a sympathetic and poetic See also:scheme of colour, and composition of a fine See also:order, combined with far greater force and originality in " The See also:Bride," or " The Beloved," that magnificent See also:illustration of The See also:Song of See also:Solomon . The last named is a life-See also:size group of powerfully coloured and diversely beautiful damsels accompanying their See also:mistress with music and with song on her way to the bridegroom . This picture, as regards its brilliance, finish, the charms of four lovely faces and the splendour of its See also:lighting, occupies a great place in the highest grade of modern art of all the world . It is likewise, so far as the qualities named are concerned, the crowning piece of Rossetti's art, and stands for him much as the " Sacred and Profane Love " of See also:Titian represents that master . Very fine, indeed, but hardly so passionate and virile, is the " Beata Beatrix," now in the National Gallery of British Art with " Ecce Ancilla Domini I" which he produced thirteen years earlier . These works belong to a See also:category of fine and quite original examples, all replete with In 1857, Rossetti, when in Oxford with William See also:Morris, conceived the design of filling the bays above the gallery in the then new Union debating See also:room (now the library) with paintings from the Morte d'Arthur, and he enlisted the co-operation of several of his artistic circle, including Burne-See also:Jones and William Morris, in the work, which was begun in . See also:August . Morris's picture was " Sir Palomides watching Tristram and Iseult," Burne-Jones's " Nimue luring See also:Merlin." Unfortunately the walls were too new and not properly prepared for painting; the colour soon began to fade and See also:wear off, and in the course of twenty years or so the pictures became almost indistinguishable . similar technical qualities, poetry and pathos . The group comprises paintings by which Rossetti is best known, such as " Proserpina in Hades," which is, on the whole, perhaps the most original, if not indeed the most poetical and powerful, of all his output; " Sibylla Palmifera," " See also:Venus Verticordia," " See also:Lilith " (the better of the two versions is now referred to), " Washing Hands," " Monna Vanna," " Il Ramoscello," " Aurea Catena," " La Pia," " Rosa Triplex," " See also:Veronica Veronese," " La Ghirlandata," " See also:Pandora," " The Blessed Damozel," and, last and largest, but not, perhaps, the greatest of his paintings (a distinction for which " The Bride " and " Proserpina " must contend), the famous " Dante's Dream," now in the See also:Walker Art Gallery at See also:Liverpool .

Phoenix-squares

Besides these, Rossetti produced a large number of fine things . Nearly the whole of them were exhibited by the Royal Academy and at the See also:

Burlington Fine Art See also:Club in 1883, after their author's death . (F . G . S.)] Meanwhile, the literary See also:side of Rossetti had developed pari passu with his achievements as a painter . The See also:goal before the young Rossetti's eyes was to reach through art the forgotten world of old romance—that world of wonder and See also:mystery and spiritual beauty which the old masters knew and could have painted had not lack of See also:science, combined with See also:slavery to monkish traditions of See also:asceticism, crippled their strength . In that great See also:rebellion against the renascence of classicism which (after working much good and much harm) resulted in 18th-See also:century See also:materialism—in that great movement of man's soul which may be appropriately named " the Renascence of the Spirit of Wonder in Poetry and Art "—he had become the acknowledged protagonist before ever the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood was founded, and so he remained down to his last breath . It was by inevitable See also:instinct that Rossetti turned to that mysterious side of nature and man's life which to other painters of his time had been a See also:mere See also:fancy-See also:land, to be visited, if at all, on the wings of See also:sport . For if there is any permanent vitality in the Renascence of Wonder in modern See also:Europe, if it is really the inevitable expression of the soul of man in a certain See also:stage of See also:civilization (when the sanctions which have made and moulded society are found to be not See also:absolute and eternal, but relative, mundane, ephemeral and subject to the higher sanctions of unseen powers that work behind " the shows of things "), then perhaps one of the first questions to ask in regard to any imaginative painter of the 19th century is, In what relation did he stand to the newly awakened spirit of romance ? Had he a genuine and independent sympathy with that See also:temper of wonder and mystery which all over Europe had preceded and now followed the temper of See also:imitation, prosaic See also:acceptance, pseudo-classicism and domestic materialism? or was his apparent sympathy with the temper of wonder, reverence and See also:awe the result of artistic environment dictated to him by other and more powerful and original souls around him ? We do not say that the mere fact of a painter's or a poet's showing but an imperfect sympathy with the Renascence of Wonder is sufficient to place him below a poet in whom that sympathy is more nearly See also:complete, but we do say that, other things being equal or anything like equal, a painter or poet of this time is to be judged very much by his sympathy with that great movement, which we See also:call the Renascence of Wonder because the word " romanticism " never did See also:express it even before it had been vulgarized by French poets, dramatists, See also:doctrinaires and literary harlequins . To struggle against the See also:prim traditions of the 18th century, the unities of See also:Aristotle, the delineation of types instead of characters, as See also:Chateaubriand, Madame de See also:Stael, See also:Balzac and See also:Hugo struggled, was well .

But in studying Rossetti's works we reach the very See also:

key of those " high palaces of romance " which the English mind had never, even in the 18th century, wholly forgotten, but whose mystic See also:gates no Frenchman ever yet unlocked . Not all the romantic feeling to be found in all the French romanticists (with their theory that not earnestness but the See also:grotesque is the life-See also:blood of romance) could equal the romanticspirit expressed in a single picture or drawing of Rossetti's,• such, for instance, as Beata Beatrix or Pandora . For, while the French romanticists—inspired by the theories (See also:drawn from English exemplars) of See also:Novalis, See also:Tieck and See also:Herder—cleverly simulated the old romantic feeling, the " beautifully devotional feeling " which Holman Hunt speaks of, Rossetti was steeped in it: he was so full of the old See also:frank childlike wonder and awe which preceded the great renascence of materialism that he might have lived and worked amidst the old masters . Hence, in point of design, so original is he that to match such ideas as are expressed in " Lilith," " Hesterna Rosa," " Michael See also:Scott's Wooing," the " See also:Sea Spell," &c., we have to turn to the sister art of poetry, where only we can find an equally powerful artistic See also:representation of the See also:idea at the core of the old romanticism—the idea of the evil forces of nature assailing man through his sense of beauty . We must turn, we say, not to art—not even to the old masters themselves—but to the most perfect efflorescence of the poetry of wonder and mystery—to such See also:ballads as the " Demon See also:Lover," to See also: