Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English painter and poet born in 1828 in London. He co-founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, reacting against traditional historical paintings. Rossetti painted dreamlike images of women conveying ideas of sensuality, beauty, love, death and destiny. He often used his wife Elizabeth Siddal and other women as models for his paintings. After Siddal's death in 1862, Rossetti had an affair with Jane Burden Morris, using her as a model as well and painting her in somber, enigmatic images. Rossetti was also a poet and often wrote sonnets to accompany his paintings.

1. Painter and Poet

2. Born on May 12, 1828, in
London, England, of
English-Italian parents, the
English painter and poet
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a
cofounder of the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood, a
band of painters that reacted
against unimaginative and
traditional historical
paintings.
Self portrait

3. His works show a
passionate imagination,
strongly contrasting
Victorian art which was
popular during the
second half of the
nineteenth century.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Algernon
Swinburne

4. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, by George Frederic Watts
•
In 1860, he married his
long-time (since 1850)
model Elizabeth Eleanor
Siddal. This feminine
ideal of the Preraffaelites
was Rossetti's muse and
source of inspiration until
her suicide in 1862. He
idealised her image as
Dante's Beatrice in a
number of paintings,
such as "Beata Beatrix".

5. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
probably met Lizzie
Siddal in 1852 or 1853,
and began to use her as a
model to the exclusion of
all others. With her
classical beauty and
copper-red hair she was
one of the early Pre-
Raphaelite period's
stunningly beautiful
models, or "stunners" as
they were called.

6. Jane Burden Morris:
An Enigmatic Muse
Jane Burden’s affair
with Dante Gabriel
Rossetti after his wife
Lizzie Siddal died was
famous. She began to
pose for Rossetti which
started a series of his
masterpieces –he painted
her repeatedly until his
death. All of Rossetti’s
paintings of Jane seem
somber, enigmatic. She
seems quiet and
contemplative. A
mystery.
Perlascura

7. Considered one of the most unconventional
painters of the 19th century, Rossetti painted in
his maturity “ powerful and mysterious
dreamlike images of women that convey, through
poetic suggestiveness and allusive detail, ideas of
sensuality, beauty, love, death and destiny”.

8. La Bella Mano
“In royal wise ring-girt
and bracelet-spann’d
A flower of Venus’ own
virginity,
Go shine among thy
sisterly sweet band;
In maiden-minded
converse delicately
Evermore white and soft;
until thou be,
O hand! heart-handsel’d
in a lover’s hand”.
La Bella Mano

9. Water Willow

10. A Sea Spell

11. “She hath the apple in her hand
for thee,
Yet almost in her heart would
hold it back;
She muses, with her eyes upon
the track
Of that which in thy spirit
they can see.
Haply, ‘Behold, he is at peace,’
saith she;
‘Alas! the apple for his lips, –
the dart
That follows its brief sweetness
to his heart,-
The wandering of his feet
perpetually!’ Venus Verticordia

12. My Lady Greensleeves

13. Lady Lilith
Lilith
“Of Adam's first wife, Lilith,
it is told
(The witch he loved before the
gift of Eve,)
That, ere the snake's, her sweet
tongue could deceive,
And her enchanted hair was
the first gold.
And still she sits, young while
the earth is old,
And, subtly of herself
contemplative,
Draws men to watch the bright
web she can weave,
Till heart and body and life
are in its hold.”
“

14. The First Madness of Ophelia

15. A Vision of Fiametta
“BEHOLD Fiammetta,
shown in Vision here.
Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed
apple-growth she
stands;
And as she sways the
branches with her hands,
Along her arm the
sundered bloom falls sheer,
In separate petals shed,
each like a tear;”
-------

16. Proserpine

17. Sibylla Palmifera.
“SOUL'S BEAUTY
UNDER the arch of Life, where love
and death,
Terror and mystery, guard her shrine,
I saw
Beauty enthroned; and though her
gaze struck awe,
I drew it in as simply as my breath.
Hers are the eyes which, over and
beneath,
The sky and sea bend on thee,--which
can draw,
By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
The allotted bondman of her palm and
wreath.This is that Lady Beauty, in
whose praise
Thy voice and hand shake still,--long
known to thee”
----------

18. Rossetti also
typically wrote
sonnets for his
pictures, such as
"Astarte Syraica".

19. Astarte Syriaca
“Mystery; lo! betwixt the sun and
moon
Astarte of the Syrians: Venus
Queen
Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
Her twofold girdle clasps the
infinite boon
Of bliss whereof the heaven and
earth commune:
And from her neck’s inclining
flower-stem lean
Love-freighted lips and absolute
eyes that wean
The pulse of hearts to the spheres’
dominant tune”

20. Bocca Baciata
“Bocca baciata
non perde
ventura, anzi
rinnova come fa
la luna”.
(Bocaccio)

21. Helen of Troy
“Heavenborn Helen,
Sparta's queen,
(O Troy
Town!)
Had two breasts of
heavenly sheen,
The sun and moon of
the heart's desire:
All Love's lordship lay
between.
(O Troy's
down,
Tall Troy's
on fire!) “

22. Monna Vanna

23. La Ghirlandata.

24. La Donna della Finestra.

25. The Daydream

26. Fair Rosamund

27. Joan of Arc

28. St. Catherine

29. Sancta Lilias

30. In the 1850s, Rossetti evokes a
richly colorful, chivalric and
nostalgic representation of the
Middle Ages in a set of watercolor
paintings inspired by the Morte
d’Arthur and the works of Dante.

31. Dante 1851-56

32. Dantis Amor.

33. La Pia de' Tolomei

34. Beatrice, meeting Dante at a Wedding Feast, denies him her Salutation

35. Beata Beatrice

36. The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise...

37. Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice

38. The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel.”

39. Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice

40. Romantic Medievalism 1853-60

41. Paolo and Francesca

42. A Study of Guinevère

43. Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel.

44. Last Meeting Arthur’s Tomb - of Lancelot and Guinevere

45. How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival Were Fed with
the Sanc Grael; but Sir Percival's Sister Died by the Way

46. The Damsel of the Sanct Grael

47. The Damsel of the
Sanct Grael or Holy
Grail

48. Music :André Rieu (Greensleeves)
Photos and texts: Web