rossetti

A variation of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's own description of the work, given in a 14 November 1848 letter to Charles Lyell, is primary: “It belongs 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…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

According to Surtees, this is the last portrait Dante Gabriel Rossetti made of his mother. It was completed during his recuperative stay at Hunter's Forestall, Kent (Surtees 188).

See the commentary for the early drawing and the later finished oil as well as Rossetti's…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

This is one of the many Marian pictures and poems that Dante Gabriel Rossetti created in the late 1840s and early to mid-1850s. The sketch for the virtually finished pencil drawing has on its back a study for The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise. The contiguity underscores…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive. 

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

Based on the story of the Lady of Siena as told in Dante Alighieri's Purgatorio (V. 130-136), the painting bears within itself an oblique allusion to the relations between Jane Morris, her husband William, and their close friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Jane sat for…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

Henry Currie Marillier describes this as “a scene suggested by Thomas Malory. In a lighted chapel a lady is helping to arm a kneeling knight in red, her long white head-dress, as she stoops to kiss him, falling like a mantle down her blue dress. She is holding his long two-handed sword.…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

William Sharp admired this picture, on which he made an elaborate commentary. Particularly noteworthy is the following remark: “I have heard it spoken of as one of his few modern paintings, but while not of necessity belonging to any definite period it undoubtedly assimilates much…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

During the 1850s and early 1860s, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his circle were deeply interested in Aurthurian subject matter. In the late 1850’s Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted scenes from Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur in fresco in the Oxford Union Debating Society hall, and…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

The drawing is a key document in the early development of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ideas about how to represent the neo-platonic “dream maiden” that pervades the entire corpus of his work both literary and pictorial. The pertinence of this figure to that subject is underscored by the…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive. 

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

This image of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal (1829-1862) is perhaps the most dominant figura of the first phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Until her tragic death of an overdose of laudanum, she was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's principal model. She inspired him…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

This drawing is perhaps the most celebrated in the series of drawings Dante Gabriel Rossetti made to illustrate texts from Lord Alfred Tennyson's poetry. The target in this case is "The Palace of Art” (lines 97-100). The difficulty arises because of the erotic intensity of the picture,…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.

Scholarly Commentary                                  

Introduction

This famous drawing gives an important statement of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's thoughts…

A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive.  

Emparadised Damozel gazing downward. “Behind the Damozel, beneath spreading branches, groups of lovers embrace against a pink sky; below her a pink flame outlines three angel heads. In the predella the earthly lover rests beside a river in a wooded landscape” (Surtees, Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 142).…