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 Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed.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 :. | Astarte Syriaca (mk19) | Venus Vertisordia | La Ghirlandate | The Seed of David | The Bower Meadow |
Related Artists:
RIBALTA, Francisco
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1565-1628 He was the most distinguished artist working in Valencia in the early 17th century. His move towards naturalism at an early date was significant for the history of Spanish painting as well as being very influential. His documented mature works after about 1620 show a change of vision, and they are also of the highest quality. The religious paintings are depicted with more pronounced realism, and his deeply felt spiritual belief is expressed in a direct and very immediate way. In 1607 Ribalta supported other leading Valencian painters in a move to form the Colegio de Pintores (College of Painters) to safeguard the interests of the profession. The expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 and the death in 1611 of the Patriarch Archbishop Juan de Ribera, Ribalta's most important patron, led to an economic crisis and spiritual void in Valencia that had an effect on his activity, since thereafter commissions came more rarely, and his work became more introspective. During 1616 and 1617 the idea of forming the Colegio de Pintores was revived, and Ribalta took an active role in the management and signed the petition to Philip III seeking support for the Colegio.
Thomas Birch
1779-1851 Thomas Birch Gallery American painter of English birth. He was one of the most important American landscape and marine painters of the early 19th century. He moved to America in 1794 with his father William Birch (1755-1834), a painter and engraver from whom he received his artistic training. The family settled in Philadelphia, where William, armed with letters of introduction from Benjamin West to leading citizens of that city, became a drawing-master. Early in their American careers both Birches executed cityscapes, several of which were engraved. Thomas contributed a number of compositions to The City of Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania, North America, as it Appeared in the Year 1800 (1800), a series of views conceived by the elder Birch in obvious imitation of comparable British productions. An English sensibility is also apparent in the many paintings of country estates executed by father and son in the early 19th century (e.g. Eaglesfield, 1808; priv. col.). These compositions, along with such portrayals of important public edifices in and near Philadelphia as Fairmount Waterworks (1821; Philadelphia, PA Acad. F.A.), emphasize the cultural progress and commercial prosperity of the young United States as well as its almost Edenic natural beauty. Birch is also known for his representations of winter landscapes.
MICHELI Parrasio
Italian painter, Venetian school (before 1516 - 1578) Italian painter and draughtsman. The natural son of a Venetian aristocrat, Salvador Michiel, he pursued his early training in the workshop of Titian and later in his career was associated with Paolo Veronese, who provided him with drawings for his paintings. He is known to have been in Rome before 1547. Micheli's earliest work is an altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child with SS Lorenzo and Ursula (1535; Murano, S Pietro Martire), which was commissioned by Ursula Pasqualigo in memory of her deceased husband, the former Procurator Lorenzo Pasqualigo. There is also a Venus and Cupid (c. 1547; London, priv. col.) and a Lucrezia (c. 1547; London, Mond col.). In 1550 he married the daughter of a German baker. Several documented paintings have been destroyed or are untraced: the painting of Doge Lorenzo Priuli Accompanied by Ten Senators with Personifications of Fortune and Venice (1563), for which he received 225 ducats, was destroyed in the fire in the Doge's Palace of 1574. The work is known from a preparatory study (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) and a contract of 22 October 1563. Five paintings known to have been in the Libreria Marciana that same year are also untraced. The large painting depicting the Adoration of the Dead Christ (Venice, S Giuseppe), signed and dated parrhasio Micheli dipinse nel 1573, includes a self-portrait. Micheli also painted portraits of Venetian noblemen (e.g. Girolamo Zane, Venice, Accademia; Tommaso Contarini, Venice, Doge's Palace) and associated with prominent men of letters including Paolo Giovio and Pietro Aretino.