English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.  Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | Self-Portrait (mk28) | La Ghirlandate (mk28) | The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (mk28) | Venus Verticordia (mk28) | The Beloved |
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Jan van Beers
(22 February 1821 - 14 November 1888) was Flemish poet born in Antwerp. He is usually referred to as "van Beers the elder" to distinguish him from his son, Jan van Beers, the painter. Van Beers was essentially a Netherlander, though politically a Belgian, expressing his thoughts in the same language as any North Netherland writer. In fact, the poems of Jan van Beers are perhaps more popular in the Netherlands than in Belgium, and of many of them there exist more editions printed in the Netherlands than in his political fatherland. Van Beers started life as a teacher of Dutch language and literature, first at Mechelen, then at Lier, and in 1860 was appointed a professor of both at the Athenaeum (high school) in Antwerp, where he had also been a sub-librarian in the communal library. Van Beers as a teacher was early in the field, with Hendrik Conscience, Willems and others, when the Flemish movement began. He composed a Dutch grammar (1852), which, in enlarged editions, still holds the field, and a volume of selections from Dutch authors, both books being so much appreciated that the Belgian government made them text-books in the public schools. Van Beers's historical poems, the principal of which is, perhaps, Jakob Van Maerlant (Amsterdam, 1860), helped the Flemish revival in Belgium as powerfully as his school-books. He is best known, however, as the writer of ballads and songs. Jongelingsdroomen ("A Young Man's Dreams") first appeared at Antwerp and Amsterdam in 1853. These poems were followed by Levensbeelden ("Life Figures or Pictures," Amsterdam, 1858) and by Gevoel en Leven ("Feeling Living," Amsterdam, 1869). His Rijzende Blaren ("Rising Leaves") first made its appearance at Ghent and Rotterdam in 1883.
BOCCACCINO, Boccaccio
Italian painter, Cremonese school (b. before 1466, Ferrara, d. 1524/25, Cremona) He is first recorded in 1493 in Genoa, where he contracted to paint the high altarpiece (untraced) for S Maria della Consolazione. In 1497 he was extracted from prison in Milan by the agent of Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and worked for the Duke in Ferrara until 1500. Perhaps as a consequence of having killed his common-law wife he then left, presumably for Venice, where he is recorded as residing in 1505. A fresco in Cremona Cathedral is dated 1506.
Carl Joseph Begas
Carl Joseph Begas (September 30, 1794 - November 24, 1854), was a German historical painter born at Heinsberg near Aachen. His father, a retired judge, destined him for the legal profession, but the boy's tastes pointed definitely in another direction. Even at school he was remarked for his wonderful skill in drawing and painting, and in 1812 he was permitted to visit Paris in order to perfect himself in his art. He studied for eighteen months in the atelier of Antoine Jean Gros then began to work independently. In 1814 his copy of The Madonna della Sedia was bought by the king of Prussia, who was attracted by the young artist and did much to advance him. He was engaged to paint several large Biblical pictures, and in 1825, after his return from Italy, continued to produce paintings which were placed in the churches of Berlin and Potsdam. Some of these were historical pieces, but the majority were representations of Scriptural incidents. Begas was also celebrated as a portrait-painter, and supplied to the royal gallery a long series of portraits of eminent Prussian men of letters. At his death he held the post of court painter at Berlin.