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 Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed.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 :. | The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (mk28) | A Christmas Carol (mk28) | King Rene's Honeymoon | John Parsons Jane Morris (mk28) | Beata Beatrix |
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TIEPOLO, Giovanni Domenico
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1727, Venezia, d. 1804, Venezia). Italian painter and printmaker. He was apprenticed to his father, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, in Venice in the early 1740s and worked with him in Madrid from 1762 until the elder's death in 1770. His most notable early works are the chinoiserie decorations of the Villa Valmarana in Vicenza (1757). Back in Venice, he executed several frescoes and paintings of scenes from the commedia dell'arte. A talented genre painter and caricaturist, he was famous for his many engravings and etchings after his own and his father's designs.
Juan de Valdes Leal
Seville 1622-1690 was a Spanish painter of the Baroque era. He was born at Seville in 1622, and distinguished himself as a painter, sculptor, and architect. He worked for a time under Antonio del Castillo. Among his works are a History of the Prophet Elias for the church of the Carmelites; a Martyrdom of St. Andrew for the church of San Francesco at Cerdoba; and a Triumph of the Cross for la Caridad at Seville. He was one of the founders of the Seville Academy along with his friend, Bartolome Esteban Murillo. He died at Seville. His wife (daughter of Antonio Palomino), Isabella Carasquilla, was also a painter. She died at Seville as late as 1730. Their children were artists, including Lucas, Juan, Maria, and Laura de Valdes. His daughters specialized in portrait miniatures.
Francia Alexandre
French , 1815-Bruxelles 1884