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 Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed.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) | Writing on the Sand (mk46) | Rosa Triplex | The Blue Closet (mk28) | The Bower Meadow (mk28) |
Related Artists:
Roussel Charles
French , 1861-1836
Lodovico Carracci
(21 April 1555 - 13 November 1619) was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna. Ludovico himself apprenticed under Prospero Fontana in Bologna and traveled to Florence, Parma, and Venice, before returning to his hometown. Along with his cousins Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Ludovico in 1585 was a founder and director (caposindaco) of the so-called Eclectic Academy of painting (also called the Accademia degli Incamminati), which in reality was a studio with apprenticed assistants. This studio however propelled a number of Emilian artists to pre-eminence in Rome and elsewhere, and singularly helped encourage the so-called Bolognese School) of the late 16th century, which included Albani, Guercino, Sacchi, Reni, Lanfranco and Domenichino. The Carracci had their apprentice draw studies focused on observation of nature and natural poses, and use a bold scale in drawing figures. Ludovico specifically helped train Giacomo Cavedone. The Carracci are credited with reinvigorating Italian art, especially fresco art, which was subsumed with formalistic Mannerism. Carracci's own works are characterized by a strong mood invoked by broad gestures and flickering light that create spiritual emotion. Ludovico Carracci died in Bologna in 1619.
Hans von Marees
(24 December 1837 - 5 June 1887) was a German painter. He mainly painted country scenes in a realistic style. Von Marees was born in Elberfeld, Germany. At age 16, he was sent to the Berlin Academy. In 1857, he moved to Munich. In 1869, he visited France, the Netherlands and Spain. He served in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and then lived in Berlin and Dresden for a while. In 1873, he decorated the library walls of the newly built Naples Zoological Institute in Italy. The next year, he moved to Florence. He died in Rome at the age of 49 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.