Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Italian Renaissance: Envisioning Aesthetic Beauty and the Past Through Images of Women

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Italian Renaissance: Envisioning Aesthetic Beauty and the Past Through Images of Women Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2010 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: ENVISIONING AESTHETIC BEAUTY AND THE PAST THROUGH IMAGES OF WOMEN Carolyn Porter Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/113 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. © Carolyn Elizabeth Porter 2010 All Rights Reserved “DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE: ENVISIONING AESTHETIC BEAUTY AND THE PAST THROUGH IMAGES OF WOMEN” A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University. by CAROLYN ELIZABETH PORTER Master of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2007 Bachelor of Arts, Furman University, 2004 Director: ERIC GARBERSON ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ART HISTORY Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia August 2010 Acknowledgements I owe a huge debt of gratitude to many individuals and institutions that have helped this project along for many years. Without their generous support in the form of financial assistance, sound professional advice, and unyielding personal encouragement, completing my research would not have been possible. I have been fortunate to receive funding to undertake the years of work necessary for this project. Much of my assistance has come from Virginia Commonwealth University. I am thankful for several assistantships and travel funding from the Department of Art History, a travel grant from the School of the Arts, a Doctoral Assistantship from the School of Graduate Studies, and a Dissertation Writing Assistantship from the university. I am also greatly indebted to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for a generous Graduate Fellowship, which enabled me to fund dissertation research. Many individuals have shaped my thinking throughout this project, and to them I offer sincere thanks. Jerome McGann, University of Virginia, and Mark Samuels Lasner, University of Delaware, both graciously sacrificed their time to discuss all things Rossetti with me. My research at several institutions would not have been possible without the help of kind and knowledgeable museum and library staff. Specifically, I would like to thank Rebecca Melvin Johnson at the University of Delaware Special Collections; Margaretta S. Frederick and Rachael Di Leteurio at the Delaware Art Museum; Sabrina Abron at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; and iii Mitchell Merling at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. I am especially grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, who have each spent so much time guiding me through this arduous endeavor. I am particularly indebted to my advisor, Eric Garberson, who has been an incomparable guide. Much of what I have worked for in my academic career is contained in the following pages. I consider getting it all down a personal accomplishment but not one that would have been possible without the unquestioning support of my amazing family and my companion, Jay. To them, I offer thanks and all my love. iv Table of Contents Page Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................iii Abstract..............................................................................................................................vii Introduction: Rossetti, the Renaissance, and the Representation of Beauty .......................8 Chapter 1 THE RENAISSANCE IDEALIZED: HISTORY’S BEAUTY IN FAZIO’S MISTRESS...................................................................................................38 Part One: Rossetti’s “Bodily” View of Art in the 1860s ...........................39 Part Two: Rossetti and the Aesthetic Past .................................................46 Part Three: Fazio’s Mistress: Beauty Past, Beauty Present........................79 2 THE RENAISSANCE PORTRAYED: IDEAL BEAUTY AND PORTRAITURE IN BOCCA BACIATA .........................................................92 Part One: Rossetti’s Images of Women and Questions of Portraiture........93 Part Two: Aestheticism, Portraiture, and the Renaissance .......................102 Part Three: The Real and Ideal in Bocca Baciata ....................................125 3 THE LYRICAL RENAISSANCE: AESTHETIC COLOR IN THE BLUE BOWER..............................................................................................140 Part One: Lyrical Color in The Blue Bower..............................................142 Part Two: The Glamorous Venetians: Dangerously Debauched Color ....158 Part Three: The Reclamation of Color in The Blue Bower.......................170 4 THE FATAL RENAISSANCE: THE PERILOUS BEAUTY OF LADY LILITH...........................................................................................................183 v Part One: Rossetti’s Lady Lilith and the femme fatale..............................185 Part Two: Danger and Beauty: the Genesis of Lady Lilith .......................196 Part Three: Absorption and Aesthetic Experience in Lady Lilith .............209 Conclusion: Rossetti and Questions of Aesthetic Historicism........................................218 Bibliography....................................................................................................................225 Vita ..................................................................................................................................243 vi Abstract This dissertation examines Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s knowledge and interpretation of the Italian Renaissance during the 1860s. I argue that there is a relationship between Rossetti’s Aestheticism and his understanding of the Italian Renaissance and that this relationship is visibly manifested in his images of women from the period. In Victorian England, Aestheticism and the philosophy of beauty for its own sake became increasingly popular throughout the 1860s. I challenge the idea that Aestheticism and an interest in Renaissance art are mutually exclusive aspects of the artist’s work. Rossetti’s images of women expressed both his understanding of Renaissance art and the central place of beauty in painting. Based upon Rossetti’s interpretation of Renaissance art and poetry, his criticism, and the criticism of his peers, this dissertation argues that the beauty of women in Rossetti’s paintings came to stand for the beauty of art. Rossetti’s paintings promoted sensual Aesthetic experience in their conflation of formal and female beauty. Using the historically idealized conventions of female portraiture, Rossetti created images of women that privileged Aesthetic beauty over narrative or moral meaning. His use of vibrant, rich color, a quality he and his peers inexorably associated with Venetian Renaissance painting, revealed the connection between Renaissance art and his Aestheticism. Color helped to define his paintings of women as examples of beautiful, sensuous painting. For Rossetti, the representation of alluring, beautiful women was the most powerful way to express the experience of Aesthetic beauty as intoxicating, sensual, and even morally ambiguous. vii INTRODUCTION: ROSSETTI, THE RENAISSANCE, AND THE REPRESENTATION OF BEAUTY For decades Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) has been a figure of intense interest in studies of Victorian art and literature, but many explanations of his work remain deceptively underdeveloped. Accounts of his painting frequently marginalize the crucial role that Italian Renaissance art and literature played in the development of his Aestheticism during the 1860s. I explore Rossetti’s profound engagement with specific aspects of historical tradition, namely painting and poetry relating to themes of women’s beauty, and discuss the ways certain aspects of tradition affected Rossetti’s own representation of women’s beauty from the 1860s. My discussion focuses on four half-length paintings of women produced between 1859 and 1869: Bocca Baciata, 1859 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Fazio’s Mistress, 1863 (Tate Gallery, London); The Blue Bower, 1865 (The Barber Institute, Birmingham); and Lady Lilith, 1869 (Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington). The convergence of Rossetti’s enthusiasm for the Renaissance and engagement with Aestheticism are evident in these images of women. I argue that Rossetti’s conception of the past and his Aesthetic philosophy were not disparate threads of his career but can and should be viewed as related aspects of his production. In his representations of beautiful women, which served as the vehicle for his expression of Aesthetic beauty, the connection between historical tradition and 8 Aestheticism is clearly and ultimately revealed. Part One: The Argument I consider Rossetti’s paintings of women as early but foundational examples of Victorian Aestheticism.1 I have three primary reasons for considering Rossetti’s work as Aesthetic and for concentrating specifically on his images of women, the dominant subject within his production throughout the 1860s. First, considering Rossetti’s images of women as examples of Aesthetic painting more clearly identifies Rossetti’s place within a movement that has resisted
Recommended publications
  • The Virgin Mary and the Feminist Voice in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's
    Małgorzata Hołdys She "felt no fear at all"? : the Virgin Mary and the Feminist Voice in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini! Acta Philologica nr 45, 36-42 2014 36 Małgorzata Hołdys Małgorzata Hołdys She “felt no fear at all”? The Virgin Mary and the Feminist Voice in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini! As it is widely known, Dante Gabriel Rossetti has never been a feminist critics’ favorite. He has been frequently criticized for indulging in a way of looking known as “the male gaze,” where the woman is depicted as a lifeless object of contemplation and a thing to be possessed rather than an individualized, thinking human being. Alternatively, his art – both poetic and pictorial – has been critiqued for stripping strong and autonomous women of their femininity.1 Finally, some of his poetic texts – the literary ballad “Eden Bower” or his sonnet “Body’s Beauty” are good examples here – are overtly misogynist in tone, as they locate the origin of the fall in female sexuality and go on to present it in monstrous, grotesque tones. However, after closer scrutiny, it seems that Rossetti does not deserve such harsh criticism. The present paper aims at partial rehabilitation of the leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by showing his art as protofeminist. To do so, I intend to look closely at two famous early paintings by Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini! (The Annunciation) and The Girlhood of Mary Virgin as well as at two sonnets that accompany the latter painting in order to see how the allegedly anti-feminist artist makes a claim against si- lencing, objectification, and marginalization of women.
    [Show full text]
  • Death and Possibility in Alice James and Christina Rossetti Erika Kvistad
    Journal of International Women's Studies Volume 12 Issue 2 Winning and Short-listed Entries from the Article 7 2009 Feminist and Women's Studies Association Annual Student Essay Competition Mar-2011 ‘What Happens, or Rather Doesn’t Happen’: Death and Possibility in Alice James and Christina Rossetti Erika Kvistad Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws Part of the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Kvistad, Erika (2011). ‘What Happens, or Rather Doesn’t Happen’: Death and Possibility in Alice James and Christina Rossetti. Journal of International Women's Studies, 12(2), 75-87. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol12/iss2/7 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ©2011 Journal of International Women’s Studies. ‘What Happens, or Rather Doesn’t Happen’: Death and Possibility in Alice James and Christina Rossetti By Erika Kvistad Abstract The idea of the dying Victorian woman as passive victim or object of desire has justly received critical attention, but this has meant a comparative neglect of the dying Victorian woman as an active, speaking, writing subject. In response, this article focuses on the death writing of Alice James and Christina Rossetti, reading the central role of death in their work as a way of articulating a space of possibility beyond what life has to offer.
    [Show full text]
  • Christina Rossetti
    This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com ChristinaRossetti MackenzieBell,HellenaTeresaMurray,JohnParkerAnderson,AgnesMilne the g1ft of Fred Newton Scott l'hl'lll'l'l'llllftlill MMM1IIIH1I Il'l'l lulling TVr-K^vr^ lit 34-3 y s ( CHRISTINA ROSSETTI J" by thtie s-ajmis atjthoe. SPRING'S IMMORTALITY: AND OTHER POEMS. Th1rd Ed1t1on, completing 1,500 copies. Cloth gilt, 3J. W. The Athen-cum.— ' Has an unquestionable charm of its own.' The Da1ly News.— 'Throughout a model of finished workmanship.' The Bookman.—' His verse leaves on us the impression that we have been in company with a poet.' CHARLES WHITEHEAD : A FORGOTTEN GENIUS. A MONOGRAPH, WITH EXTRACTS FROM WHITEHEAD'S WORKS. New Ed1t1on. With an Appreciation of Whitehead by Mr, Hall Ca1ne. Cloth, 3*. f»d. The T1mes. — * It is grange how men with a true touch of genius in them can sink out of recognition ; and this occurs very rapidly sometimes, as in the case of Charles Whitehead. Several works by this wr1ter ought not to be allowed to drop out of English literature. Mr. Mackenzie Bell's sketch may consequently be welcomed for reviving the interest in Whitehead.' The Globe.—' His monograph is carefully, neatly, and sympathetically built up.' The Pall Mall Magaz1ne.—' Mr. Mackenzie Bell's fascinating monograph.' — Mr. /. ZangwiU. PICTURES OF TRAVEL: AND OTHER POEMS. Second Thousand. Cloth, gilt top, 3*. 6d. The Queen has been graciously pleased to accept a copy of this work, and has, through her Secretary, Sir Arthur Bigge, conveyed her thanks to the Author.
    [Show full text]
  • Pre-Raphaelite Sisters
    Mariëlle Ekkelenkamp exhibition review of Pre-Raphaelite Sisters Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 19, no. 1 (Spring 2020) Citation: Mariëlle Ekkelenkamp, exhibition review of “Pre-Raphaelite Sisters ,” Nineteenth- Century Art Worldwide 19, no. 1 (Spring 2020), https://doi.org/10.29411/ncaw.2020.19.1.13. Published by: Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art Notes: This PDF is provided for reference purposes only and may not contain all the functionality or features of the original, online publication. License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License Creative Commons License. Ekkelenkamp: Pre-Raphaelite Sisters Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 19, no. 1 (Spring 2020) Pre-Raphaelite Sisters National Portrait Gallery, London October 17, 2019–January 26, 2020 Catalogue: Jan Marsh and Peter Funnell, Pre-Raphaelite Sisters. London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2019. 207 pp.; 143 color illus.; bibliography; index. $45.58 (hardcover); $32.49 (paperback) ISBN: 9781855147270 ISBN: 1855147279 The first exhibition devoted exclusively to the contribution of women to the Pre-Raphaelite movement opened in the National Portrait Gallery in London in October. It sheds light on the role of twelve female models, muses, wives, poets, and artists active within the Pre- Raphaelite circle, which is revealed as much less of an exclusive “boys’ club.” The aim of the exhibition was to “redress the balance in showing just how engaged and central women were to the endeavor, as the subjects of the images themselves, but also in their production,” as stated on the back cover of the catalogue accompanying the exhibition. Although there have been previous exhibitions on the female artists associated with the movement, such as in Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists (Manchester City Art Galleries, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Southampton City Art Gallery, 1997–98), the broader scope of this exhibition counts models and relatives among the significant players within art production and distribution.
    [Show full text]
  • BOOK REVIEW Modern Painters, Old Masters: the Art of Imitation From
    Tessa Kilgarriff 126 BOOK REVIEW Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War, by Elizabeth Prettejohn (London: Yale University Press, 2017). 288 pp. Hardback, £45. Reviewed by Tessa Kilgarriff (University of Bristol) Visual allusion and the transhistorical relationship between works of art and their viewers form the subject of Elizabeth Prettejohn’s illuminating study, Modern Painters, Old Masters. The author proposes that the much-maligned term ‘imitation’ most accurately describes the practice by which artists and viewers form relationships with their counterparts in other historical eras. The book argues that ‘imitation’ came in two distinguishing categories during the period from the 1848 founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to the First World War: ‘competitive imitation’ (in which the artist attempts to transcend their predecessor) and ‘generous imitation’ (in which the artist faithfully copies the earlier model) (p. 15). In chapters on originality and imitation, on the influence of Jan van Eyck’s Portrait of (?) Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife (1434), on the Pre-Raphaelites’ discovery of early Renaissance painters, on Frederic Leighton’s debts to Spanish painting, and on the tension between making art and looking at it, Prettejohn asks fourteen key questions. The formulation and clarity of these questions is explained by the origins of the book, namely Prettejohn’s Paul Mellon Lectures given at the National Gallery in London and at the Yale Center for British Art in 2011. Prettejohn’s incisive questions stringently rebuff the notion that the significance of visual allusions, or references, is limited to identification.
    [Show full text]
  • Rossetti and the Blue Bower: Pre-Raphaelite Symbolism and Ideals of Beauty with a Single Female Muse
    Rossetti and The Blue Bower: Pre-Raphaelite symbolism and ideals of beauty with a single female muse The Blue Bower, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1865, oil on canvas, 84 x 70.9 cm, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham. Transcript Hello, and a warm welcome to the first of the online Tuesday Talks given by staff at the Barber Institute, the art gallery located in Birmingham on the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus. I’m Helen Cobby, Assistant Curator, and I’m pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you about the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti - whose birthday it is today, 12th May - and to discuss his painting called ‘The Blue Bower’ in the Barber’s collection. It was acquired for the gallery in 1959 and is one of the many highlights in the collection. I’ll begin with a brief introduction to Rossetti before considering ‘The Blue Bower’, focusing on the sitter and her costume, and some of the possible symbolic meanings suggested by the ornamentation, composition and accessories. If you have any questions, or would like to put forward ideas and continue discussions after hearing this short talk, please feel free to email the gallery (at [email protected]) or post to our social media platforms. Rossetti is one of the best-known and most popular of the Victorian Pre- Raphaelite painters. He was born in London on 12th May in 1828, which would make him 192 years old today. He came from a talented middle- class family. His father was an Italian political refugee and a scholar of the famous Renaissance poet, Dante, and his sister Christina was a prestigious poet.
    [Show full text]
  • PRE-RAPHAELITE STUNNERS at CHRISTIE’S in JUNE Works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Poynter and Leighton
    PRESS RELEASE | LONDON FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : 20 A p r i l 2 0 1 5 PRE-RAPHAELITE STUNNERS AT CHRISTIE’S IN JUNE Works by Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Poynter and Leighton London – This summer, Christie’s London presents a stellar collection of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian drawings and paintings – one of the very best collections in private hands with museum-quality works, some of which have not been seen for decades. Offered as part of the Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art sale on 16 June 2015, this beautiful collection features 45 works and is expected to realise in the region of £2 million. Leading the collection is one of eight works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Beatrice: A Portrait of Jane Morris (estimate: £700,000-£1 million, illustrated above left). The collection presents the opportunity for both established and new collectors alike to acquire works at a wide range of price points with estimates ranging from £1,000 to £700,000. Harriet Drummond, International Head of British Drawings & Watercolours, Christie’s: “Christie's is delighted to be handling this important and breath-takingly beautiful collection of paintings and drawings brought together by a couple of anglophile art lovers, who combined their passion for the aesthetic of the Victorian Period with the discerning eye of the connoisseur collector. It is the art of this Victorian era celebrating beauty through its depiction of largely female figures, from the monumentality of ‘Desdemona’ to the intimacy of ‘Fanny Cornforth, asleep on a chaise-longue’ that so strongly influenced our idea of beauty today.” With the recent re-emergence of interest in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, led by Tate’s Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde exhibition in 2012, this collection represents many of the ‘Stunners’ who inspired their paintings and made their work truly ‘romantic’, including eight beguiling works by Rossetti.
    [Show full text]
  • Dante's Dream: Rossetti's Reading of the Vita Nuova Through the Lens Of
    Dante’s Dream: Rossetti’s Reading of the Vita Nuova Through the Lens of a Double Translation Chiara Moriconi, La Sapienza Università di Roma Abstract Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s work as an interlinguistic and intersemiotic translator of the Vita Nuova reveals much about his characteristic adaptation of Dante to the new sensibility of Victorian poetry and art. After translating the episode of the dream of Beatrice’s death into English, Rossetti goes on to illustrate it in an early watercolor version (1865), and then in a final monumental oil (1871) which will be closely examined in this article. By focusing on both phases of Rossettian translation this article means to show how Rossetti derives from the Florentine a distinctively Dantesque iconographic repertoire which he then develops into a post-Romantic set of poetics. It is precisely in the distance between Dante’s poetry and Rossetti’s double works of art that the latter’s understanding of and autonomy from Dante has to be traced. Keywords: Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Dante Alighieri; Vita Nuova; intersemiotic translation; interlinguistic translation; Victorian literature and art; Pathetic Fallacy One of the most crucial episodes of the Vita Nuova is Beatrice’s death as dreamt by Dante. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s deep love of Dante Alighieri, inherited from his father Gabriele,1 led him to an early reading and translation into English of this chapter of the Florentine’s ‘rubrica ’. He set to illustrate the passage in 1848. The project, however, was soon laid aside and resumed between 1855 and 1857, when the artist made a watercolor of the same episode, Dante’s Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice .
    [Show full text]
  • Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh Robyne Erica Calvert
    A walk in Willowwood: Decoding the ‘Willowwoods’ of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh Robyne Erica Calvert O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood … Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. The pair had previously completed an equally stylish oday, it is unlikely that those who Ladies Luncheon Room for Cranston at the shop for bargains on bustling Ingram Street Tea Room in 1900, the year TSauchiehall Street in Glasgow are of their marriage. Through the impressive aware that they are walking in what was gesso panels The May Queen by Macdonald once a meadow of willow trees. Whatever landscape inspired the Gaelic name for this thoroughfare is long buried under a sea of concrete and pavement. Sauchiehall Street was just as busy in the fin de siècle, when Glasgow was still considered the Second City of the Empire, and shoppers – ladies in particular – needed a place to pause for refreshment from their efforts. Catherine Cranston, the formidable matriarch of her own tea-room empire in Glasgow, knew this and in 1903 selected a narrow four- storey tenement on that street to transform 1. Charles Rennie into her final, and perhaps best, catering Mackintosh, street façade establishment. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, of the Willow Tea Room, who had already proven himself a radically Sauchiehall Street, inventive architect-designer in his work Glasgow. for Cranston at the Buchanan Street and Ingram Street Tea Rooms, was given the Photo author’s collection full commission to redesign the building inside and out.1 2. Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh remodelled the façade of Mackintosh, O Ye, All Ye Cranston’s building in modern white stucco That Walk In Willowwood, that still sets it apart from its neighbours 1902.
    [Show full text]
  • Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) Had Only Seven Members but Influenced Many Other Artists
    1 • Of course, their patrons, largely the middle-class themselves form different groups and each member of the PRB appealed to different types of buyers but together they created a stronger brand. In fact, they differed from a boy band as they created works that were bought independently. As well as their overall PRB brand each created an individual brand (sub-cognitive branding) that convinced the buyer they were making a wise investment. • Millais could be trusted as he was a born artist, an honest Englishman and made an ARA in 1853 and later RA (and President just before he died). • Hunt could be trusted as an investment as he was serious, had religious convictions and worked hard at everything he did. • Rossetti was a typical unreliable Romantic image of the artist so buying one of his paintings was a wise investment as you were buying the work of a ‘real artist’. 2 • The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) had only seven members but influenced many other artists. • Those most closely associated with the PRB were Ford Madox Brown (who was seven years older), Elizabeth Siddal (who died in 1862) and Walter Deverell (who died in 1854). • Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris were about five years younger. They met at Oxford and were influenced by Rossetti. I will discuss them more fully when I cover the Arts & Crafts Movement. • There were many other artists influenced by the PRB including, • John Brett, who was influenced by John Ruskin, • Arthur Hughes, a successful artist best known for April Love, • Henry Wallis, an artist who is best known for The Death of Chatterton (1856) and The Stonebreaker (1858), • William Dyce, who influenced the Pre-Raphaelites and whose Pegwell Bay is untypical but the most Pre-Raphaelite in style of his works.
    [Show full text]
  • Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900 February 17, 2013 - May 19, 2013
    Updated Wednesday, February 13, 2013 | 2:36:43 PM Last updated Wednesday, February 13, 2013 Updated Wednesday, February 13, 2013 | 2:36:43 PM National Gallery of Art, Press Office 202.842.6353 fax: 202.789.3044 National Gallery of Art, Press Office 202.842.6353 fax: 202.789.3044 Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900 February 17, 2013 - May 19, 2013 Important: The images displayed on this page are for reference only and are not to be reproduced in any media. To obtain images and permissions for print or digital reproduction please provide your name, press affiliation and all other information as required (*) utilizing the order form at the end of this page. Digital images will be sent via e-mail. Please include a brief description of the kind of press coverage planned and your phone number so that we may contact you. Usage: Images are provided exclusively to the press, and only for purposes of publicity for the duration of the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. All published images must be accompanied by the credit line provided and with copyright information, as noted. Ford Madox Brown The Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry, 1845-1853 oil on canvas 36 x 46 cm (14 3/16 x 18 1/8 in.) framed: 50 x 62.5 x 6.5 cm (19 11/16 x 24 5/8 x 2 9/16 in.) The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Presented by Mrs. W.F.R. Weldon, 1920 William Holman Hunt The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, 1854-1860 oil on canvas 85.7 x 141 cm (33 3/4 x 55 1/2 in.) framed: 148 x 208 x 12 cm (58 1/4 x 81 7/8 x 4 3/4 in.) Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, Presented by Sir John T.
    [Show full text]
  • Beata Beatrix: La Vita Nuova E I Quadri Di Dante Gabriel Rossetti
    Dante e l’arte 2, 2015 201-226 Beata Beatrix: la Vita Nuova e i quadri di Dante Gabriel Rossetti Veronica Pesce Università di Genova [email protected] Riassunto Il contributo intende proporre un primo percorso attraverso la rilettura della Vita Nuova in ambito preraffaellita, esaminando la raffinata edizione della Vita Nuova illustrata dai quadri di Dante Gabriel Rossetti pubblicata per Roux e Viarengo all’inizio del ’900. L’edi- zione, postuma, non nasce da un preciso progetto illustrativo autoriale, pur accarezzato dal poeta-pittore fin da giovanissimo, ma mette insieme a posteriori le riproduzioni di alcune opere rossettiane a illustrazione del libello dantesco, non senza arbitrarietà. Emerge tutta- via un costante impegno dell’artista su questi soggetti che, accanto al lavoro di traduzione sulla stessa Vita Nuova e sui “poeti primitivi italiani”, e insieme con la sua produzione poetica e letteraria (almeno The Blessed Damozel e Hand and Soul), dimostra una profonda riappropriazione del testo, caratterizzata al contempo da una certa fedeltà letterale non in contraddizione con una rivisitazione profonda in tutt’altro contesto storico-artistico. Parole chiave: Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Preraffaelliti, Beatrice. Abstract The aim of the paper is to propose a first path through the rereading of the Vita Nuova within the Pre-Raphaelite culture, examining the refined edition of the Vita Nuova illustrata dai quadri di Dante Gabriel Rossetti, published by Roux and Viarengo in early ’900. This posthumous edition is not the result of a specific illustrative authorial project, although the poet-painter had aimed for this since his early age; it is rather an a posteriori and partly arbitrary collection, which puts together the reproductions of some Rossetti’s illustrations from Dante’s pamphlet.
    [Show full text]