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Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1828-1882
Romantic British, Victorian Era, Painter and Fine Arts Educator and Member of The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)
Artistically and
stylistically influenced the following painters and art periods;
Early
Renaissance,
Byzantine Style,
Gothic era,
Ambrogio
Lorenzetti,
Giotto, William
Holman Hunt and
John Everett
Millais
Education - Royal Academy Antique School
Mental Health- Depression, Paranoia, complete Mental Breakdown in 1872, Attempted Suicide several times
Cause of Death - Kidney Failure
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Rossetti was not aiming to simply illustrate a story but was more inclined toward a individual interpretation that symbolized a deeper spiritual meaning. John Ruskin, famous Victorian Art Critic and major influence on the PRB advised "This is the thing which I know—and which, if you labour faithfully, you shall know also,—that in Reverence is the chief joy and power of life;—Reverence, for what is pure and bright in your own youth; for what is true and tried in the age of others; for all that is gracious among the living,—great among the dead,—and marvelous, in the Powers that cannot die.."
The term Pre-Raphaelites refers to High Renaissance artist Raphael. Some members of the PRB referred to Raphael's work utter rubbish and criticized his decadent themes and depraved lifestyle. Raphael died of syphilis and was known as a drunkard and carouser. Dante Rossetti and the other (PRB) artists embraced the artistic style of earlier painters such as Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Paolo Veneziano, Andrea del Verrocchio and Giotto Bondone. The (PRB) felt that these painters infused their works with drama, godliness and spiritual meaning."
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was founded in 1848. The most important artist was a handsome and charming painter named Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti and his chums, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, rejected Neoclassical and High Renaissance art and embraced the spiritually infused works of the Early Renaissance, Byzantine Style and Gothic painters. They sought to created a new artistic style using biblical, mythological, and literary imagery as the subjects of their art-works. Their paintings often contain obscure visual symbols and secret riddles.
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The idealistic Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters wanted to change the world with their art, much like the hippies of the 1960s. They scorned the pretentious conventionality of the Victorian era. They sought a return to spirituality, courtliness, brotherly love and religious piousness. They rebelled against the unbridled materialism and rampant hypocrisy that was typical of the Victorian middle and upper classes. Many of the (PRB) members would spend weekends out in the woods communing with nature and God.
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti Quotations
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has
nobody to thank. -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti'
Gather a shell from the strewn beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech. -- Dante Gabriel Rossetti'
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Greatest Poems
Dream-Land
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.
She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.
Rest, rest, for evermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake;
Night that no morn shall break
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.
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Love Lily
Between the hands, between the brows,
Between the lips of Love-lily,
A spirit is born whose birth endows
My blood with fire to burn through me;
Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
At whose least touch my color flies,
And whom my life grows faint to hear.
Within the voice, within the heart,
Within the mind of Love-Lily,
A spirit is born who lifts apart
His tremulous wings and looks at me;
Who on my mouth his finger lays,
And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
That Eden of Love's watered ways
Whose winds and spirits worship her.
Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
Kisses and words of Love-Lily,--
Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
Til riotous longing rest in me!
Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
But find in her its gracious goal,
Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
Nor Love her body from her soul.
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Autumn Song
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems--not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti's
favorite
subject matter
mythology
Arthurian legends
femme fatale
Italian themes
classical themes
historical themes
literary themes
mermaids
wood nymphs
Writers who influenced Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Margaret Gatty
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
John Keats
Shakespeare
Coventry Patmore
Charles Dickens
Tennyson
Goethe
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