Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882),

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (/rəˈzɛti/),[1] was an
English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator, and member of the
Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in
1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
Rossetti inspired the next generation of artists and writers, William
Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in particular. His work also
influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of
the Aesthetic movement.

Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval

revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats and
William Blake. His later poetry was characterised by the complex
interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet
sequence, The House of Life. Poetry and image are closely
entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to
accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti c.
Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to 1871, by George Frederic Watts
illustrate poems such as Goblin Market by the celebrated poet Born Gabriel Charles
Christina Rossetti, his sister. Dante Rossetti
12 May 1828
Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially
London, England
his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal
(whom he married), Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris. Died 9 April 1882
(aged 53)
Birchington-on-Sea,
Kent, England
Contents Occupation Poet, illustrator,
Early life painter
Career Education King's College
Beginnings School
Dante and Medievalism Royal Academy
Book arts Spouse Elizabeth Siddal
Religious influence on works (m. 1860; d. 1862)
A new direction Signature
Cheyne Walk years
Decline and death
Collections and critical assessment
Media
Fiction
Influence
Selected works
 Books
Double works
Paintings
Drawings
Woodcut illustrations
Decorative arts
Caricatures and sketches
See also
References
Bibliography
External links

Early life
The son of émigré Italian scholar
Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe
Rossetti and his wife Frances Mary
Lavinia Polidori, Gabriel Charles
Dante Rossetti was born in
London, on 12 May 1828. His
family and friends called him
Gabriel, but in publications he put
the name Dante first in honour of
Dante Alighieri. He was the brother
Self-portrait, 1847 of poet Christina Rossetti, critic
William Michael Rossetti, and
author Maria Francesca Rossetti.[2]
His father was a Roman Catholic, at least prior to his marriage, and
his mother was an Anglican; ostensibly Gabriel was baptised as
and was a practising Anglican. John William Polidori, who had Original manuscript of Autumn Song
died seven years before his birth, was Rossetti's maternal uncle. by Rossetti, 1848, Ashley Library
During his childhood, Rossetti was home educated and later
attended King's College School,[3] and often read the Bible, along
with the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron.[4]

The youthful Rossetti is described as "self-possessed, articulate, passionate and charismatic"[5] but also
"ardent, poetic and feckless".[6] Like all his siblings, he aspired to be a poet and attended King's College
School, in its original location near the Strand in London. He also wished to be a painter, having shown a
great interest in Medieval Italian art. He studied at Henry Sass' Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845,
when he enrolled in the Antique School of the Royal Academy, which he left in 1848. After leaving the
Royal Academy, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown, with whom he retained a close relationship
throughout his life.[7]

Following the exhibition of William Holman Hunt's painting The Eve of St. Agnes, Rossetti sought out
Hunt's friendship. The painting illustrated a poem by John Keats. Rossetti's own poem, "The Blessed
Damozel", was an imitation of Keats, and he believed Hunt might share his artistic and literary ideals.
Together they developed the philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood which they founded along with
John Everett Millais.
The group's intention was to reform English art by rejecting what
they considered to be the mechanistic approach first adopted by the
Mannerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo and
the formal training regime introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Their approach was to return to the abundant detail, intense
colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and
Flemish art.[8][9] The eminent critic John Ruskin wrote:

Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted

to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself.
Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however studied in
expression, is a true portrait of some living person.[10]

For the first issue of the brotherhood's magazine, The Germ,

published early in 1850, Rossetti contributed a poem, "The Blessed
Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti at
Damozel", and a story about a fictional early Italian artist inspired
22 years of Age by William Holman
by a vision of a woman who bids him combine the human and the Hunt
divine in his art.[11] Rossetti was always more interested in the
medieval than in the modern side of the movement, working on
translations of Dante and other medieval Italian poets, and adopting the stylistic characteristics of the early
Italians.

Career

Beginnings

Rossetti's first major paintings in oil display the realist qualities of

the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary Virgin
(1849) and Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850) portray Mary as a teenage
girl. William Bell Scott saw Girlhood in progress in Hunt's studio
and remarked on young Rossetti's technique:

He was painting in oils with water-colour brushes, as

thinly as in water-colour, on canvas which he had
primed with white till the surface was a smooth as
cardboard, and every tint remained transparent. I saw
at once that he was not an orthodox boy, but acting
purely from the aesthetic motive. The mixture of The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849).
genius and dilettantism of both men shut me up for the The models were the artist's mother
moment, and whetted my curiosity.[13] for Saint Anne and his sister
Christina for the Virgin.[12]

Stung by criticism of his second major painting, Ecce Ancilla

Domini, exhibited in 1850, and the "increasingly hysterical critical reaction that greeted Pre-Raphaelitism"
that year, Rossetti turned to watercolours, which could be sold privately. Although his work subsequently
won support from John Ruskin, Rossetti only rarely exhibited thereafter.[5]
Dante and Medievalism

In 1850, Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal, an important model for the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Over the next
decade, she became his muse, his pupil, and his passion. They were married in 1860.[14] Rossetti's
incomplete picture Found, begun in 1853 and unfinished at his death, was his only major modern-life
subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted from the street by a country drover who recognises his old sweetheart.
However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones.[15]

For many years, Rossetti worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La
Vita Nuova (published as The Early Italian Poets in 1861). These and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte
d'Arthur inspired his art of the 1850s. He created a method of painting in watercolours, using thick
pigments mixed with gum to give rich effects similar to medieval illuminations. He also developed a novel
drawing technique in pen-and-ink. His first published illustration was "The Maids of Elfen-Mere" (1855),
for a poem by his friend William Allingham, and he contributed two illustrations to Edward Moxon's 1857
edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Poems and illustrations for works by his sister Christina Rossetti.[16]

His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired William Morris and Edward Burne-
Jones.[17] Neither Burne-Jones nor Morris knew Rossetti, but were much influenced by his works, and met
him by recruiting him as a contributor to their Oxford and Cambridge Magazine which Morris founded in
1856 to promote his ideas about art and poetry.[18][19]

In February 1857, Rossetti wrote to William Bell Scott:

Two young men, projectors of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, have recently come up
to town from Oxford, and are now very intimate friends of mine. Their names are Morris and
Jones. They have turned artists instead of taking up any other career to which the university
generally leads, and both are men of real genius. Jones's designs are marvels of finish and
imaginative detail, unequalled by anything unless perhaps Albert Dürer's finest works.[18]

That summer Morris and Rossetti visited Oxford and finding the Oxford Union debating-hall under
construction, pursued a commission to paint the upper walls with scenes from Le Morte d'Arthur and to
decorate the roof between the open timbers. Seven artists were recruited, among them Valentine Prinsep
and Arthur Hughes,[20] and the work was hastily begun. The frescoes, done too soon and too fast, began to
fade at once and now are barely decipherable. Rossetti recruited two sisters, Bessie and Jane Burden, as
models for the Oxford Union murals, and Jane became Morris's wife in 1859.[21]

Book arts

Literature was integrated into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's artistic practice from the beginning
(including that of Rossetti), with many paintings making direct literary references. For example, John
Everett Millais' early work, Isabella (1849), depicts an episode from John Keats' Isabella, or, the Pot of
Basil (1818). Rossetti was particularly critical of the gaudy ornamentation of Victorian gift books and
sought to refine bindings and illustrations to align with the principles of the Aesthetic Movement.[22]
Rossetti's key bindings were designed between 1861 and 1871.[23] He collaborated as a designer/illustrator
with his sister, poet Christina Rossetti, on the first edition of Goblin Market (1862) and The Prince's
Progress (1866). One of Rossetti's most prominent contributions to illustration was the collaborative book,
Poems by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (published by Edward Moxon in 1857 and known colloquially as the
'Moxon Tennyson'). Moxon envisioned Royal Academicians as the illustrators for the ambitious project,
but this vision was quickly disrupted once Millais, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
became involved in the project.[24] Millais recruited William Holman Hunt and Rossetti for the project, and
the involvement of these artists reshaped the entire production of the book. In reference to the Pre-
Raphaelite illustrations, Laurence Housman wrote "[...] The illustrations of the Pre-Raphaelites were
personal and intellectual readings of the poems to which they belonged, not merely echoes in line of the
words of the text."[25] The Pre-Raphaelites’ visualization of Tennyson's poems indicated the range of
possibilities in interpreting written works, as did their unique approach to visualizing narrative on the
canvas.[24]

Pre-Raphaelite illustrations do not simply refer to the text in which they appear; rather, they are part of a
bigger program of art: the book as a whole. Rossetti's philosophy about the role of illustration was revealed
in an 1855 letter to poet William Allingham, when he wrote, in reference to his work on the Moxon
Tennyson:

"I have not begun even designing for them yet, but fancy I shall try the Vision of Sin, and Palace of Art etc.
—those where one can allegorize on one’s own hook, without killing for oneself and everyone a distinct
idea of the poet’s."[26]

This passage makes apparent Rossetti's desire not to just support the poet's narrative, but to create an
allegorical illustration that functions separately from the text as well. In this respect, Pre-Raphaelite
illustrations go beyond depicting an episode from a poem, but rather function like subject paintings within a
text. Illustration is not subservient to text and vice versa. Careful and conscientious craftsmanship is
practiced in every aspect of production, and each element, though qualifiedly artistic in its own right,
contributes to a unified art object (the book).

Religious influence on works

England began to see a revival of religious beliefs and practices

starting in 1833 and moving onward to about 1845.[27] The Oxford
Movement, also known as the Tractarian Movement, had recently
begun a push toward the restoration of Christian traditions that had
been lost in the Church of England. Rossetti and his family had
been attending Christ Church, Albany Street since 1843. His
brother, William Michael Rossetti recorded that services had begun
changing in the church since the start of the "High Anglican
movement". Rev. William Dodsworth was responsible for these
changes, including the addition of the Catholic practice of placing
flowers and candles by the altar. Rossetti and his family, along with
two of his colleagues (one of which cofounded the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood) had also attended St. Andrew's on Wells Street, a
High Anglican church. It is noted that the Anglo-Catholic revival
very much affected Rossetti in the late 1840s and early 1850s. The
spiritual expressions of his painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,
Dante Gabriel Rossetti by George
finished in 1849, are evident of this claim. The painting's altar is
Wylie Hutchinson
decorated very similarly to that of a Catholic altar, proving his
familiarity with the Anglo-Catholic revival. The subject of the
painting, the Blessed Virgin, is sewing a red cloth, a significant part of the Oxford Movement that
emphasized the embroidering of altar cloths by women.[28] Oxford Reformers identified two major aspects
to their movement, that "the end of all religion must be communion with God," and "that the Church was
divinely instituted for the very purpose of bringing about this consummation."[29]
From the beginning of the Brotherhood's formation in 1848, their pieces of art included subjects of noble or
religious disposition. Their aim was to communicate a message of "moral reform" through the style of their
works, exhibiting a "truth to nature".[30] Specifically in Rossetti's "Hand and Soul," written in 1849, he
displays his main character Chiaro as an artist with spiritual inclinations. In the text, Chiaro's spirit appears
before him in the form of a woman who instructs him to "set thine hand and thy soul to serve man with
God."[31] The Rossetti Archive defines this text as "Rossetti's way of constellating his commitments to art,
religious devotion, and a thoroughly secular historicism."[32] Likewise, in "The Blessed Damozel," written
between 1847 and 1870, Rossetti uses biblical language such as "From the gold bar of Heaven" to describe
the Damozel looking down to Earth from Heaven.[33] Here we see a connection between body and soul,
mortal and supernatural, a common theme in Rossetti's works. In "Ave" (1847), Mary awaits the day that
she will meet her son in Heaven, uniting the earthly with the heavenly. The text highlights a strong element
in Anglican Marian theology that describes Mary's body and soul having been assumed into Heaven.[28]
William Michael Rossetti, his brother, wrote in 1895: "He was never confirmed, professed no religious
faith, and practised no regular religious observances; but he had ... sufficient sympathy with the abstract
ideas and the venerable forms of Christianity to go occasionally to an Anglican church — very
occasionally, and only as the inclination ruled him."

A new direction

Around 1860, Rossetti returned to oil painting, abandoning the

dense medieval compositions of the 1850s in favour of powerful
close-up images of women in flat pictorial spaces characterised by
dense colour. These paintings became a major influence on the
development of the European Symbolist movement.[34] In them,
Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised.
He portrayed his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of
physical eroticism, whilst Jane Burden, the wife of his business
partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess. "As
in Rossetti's previous reforms, the new kind of subject appeared in
the context of a wholesale reconfiguration of the practice of
painting, from the most basic level of materials and techniques up
to the most abstract or conceptual level of the meanings and ideas
that can be embodied in visual form."[34] These new works were Bocca Baciata (1859), modelled by
based not on medievalism, but on the Italian High Renaissance Fanny Cornforth, signalled a new
artists of Venice, Titian and Veronese.[34][35] direction in Rossetti's work (Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston)
In 1861, Rossetti became a founding partner in the decorative arts
firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Morris, Burne-Jones,
Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall.[19] Rossetti contributed
designs for stained glass and other decorative objects.

Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth, died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862, possibly a suicide, shortly after giving
birth to a stillborn child.[36][37] Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and on the death of his beloved
Lizzie, buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with her at Highgate Cemetery, though he later had them
dug up. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix.[38]

Cheyne Walk years

 After the death of his wife,
Rossetti leased a Tudor
House at 16, Cheyne Walk,
in Chelsea, where he lived
for 20 years surrounded by
extravagant furnishings and
a parade of exotic birds and
animals.[39] Rossetti was
fascinated with wombats,
asking friends to meet him
at the "Wombat's Lair" at
the London Zoo in
Regent's Park, and
spending hours there. In
September 1869, he Albumen print of Dante Gabriel
acquired the first of two pet Rossetti by Charles Lutwidge
His home at 16 Cheyne Walk, wombats, which he named Dodgson (Lewis Carroll; 1863)
London "Top". It was brought to
the dinner table and
allowed to sleep in the large centrepiece during meals. Rossetti's
fascination with exotic animals continued throughout his life, culminating in the purchase of a llama and a
toucan, which he dressed in a cowboy hat and trained to ride the llama round the dining-table for his
amusement.[40]

Rossetti maintained Fanny Cornforth (described delicately by William Allington as Rossetti's

"housekeeper")[41] in her own establishment nearby in Chelsea, and painted many voluptuous images of
her between 1863 and 1865.[42]

In 1865, he discovered auburn-haired Alexa Wilding, a dressmaker

and would-be actress who was engaged to model for him on a full-
time basis and sat for Veronica Veronese, The Blessed Damozel, A
Sea–Spell, and other paintings.[43][44] She sat for more of his
finished works than any other model, but comparatively little is
known about her due to the lack of any romantic connection with
Rossetti. He spotted her one evening in the Strand in 1865 and was
immediately struck by her beauty. She agreed to sit for him the
following day, but failed to arrive. He spotted her again weeks later,
jumped from the cab he was in and persuaded her to go straight to
his studio. He paid her a weekly fee to sit for him exclusively,
afraid that other artists might employ her.[45] They shared a lasting
bond; after Rossetti's death Wilding was said to have travelled
regularly to place a wreath on his grave.[46]
The Roman Widow (1874), Museo de
Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico
Jane Morris, whom Rossetti had used as a model for the Oxford
Union murals he painted with William Morris and Edward Burne-
Jones in 1857, also sat for him during these years, she "consumed
and obsessed him in paint, poetry, and life".[43] Jane Morris was also photographed by John Robert
Parsons, whose photographs were painted by Rossetti. In 1869, Morris and Rossetti rented a country
house, Kelmscott Manor at Kelmscott, Oxfordshire, as a summer home, but it became a retreat for Rossetti
and Jane Morris to have a long-lasting and complicated liaison. They spent summers there with the
Morrises' children, while William Morris travelled to Iceland in 1871 and 1873.[47]
During these years, Rossetti was prevailed upon by friends,
in particular Charles Augustus Howell, to exhume his poems
from his wife's grave which he did, collating and publishing
them in 1870 in the volume Poems by D. G. Rossetti. They
created controversy when they were attacked as the epitome
of the "fleshly school of poetry". Their eroticism and
sensuality caused offence. One poem, "Nuptial Sleep",
described a couple falling asleep after sex. It was part of
Rossetti's sonnet sequence The House of Life, a complex
series of poems tracing the physical and spiritual
development of an intimate relationship. Rossetti described Rossetti reading proofs of Ballads and
the sonnet form as a "moment's monument", implying that it Sonnets at 16 Cheyne Walk, by Henry
sought to contain the feelings of a fleeting moment, and Treffry Dunn (1882)
reflect on their meaning. The House of Life was a series of
interacting monuments to these moments – an elaborate
whole made from a mosaic of intensely described fragments. It was Rossetti's most substantial literary
achievement. The collection included some translations, including his "Ballad Of Dead Ladies", an 1869
translation of François Villon's poem "Ballade des dames du temps jadis". (The word "yesteryear" is
credited to Rossetti as a neologism used for the first time in this translation.)

In 1881, Rossetti published a second volume of poems, Ballads and Sonnets, which included the remaining
sonnets from The House of Life sequence.

Decline and
death
The savage reaction of
critics to Rossetti's first
collection of poetry
contributed to a mental
breakdown in June 1872,
and although he joined Jane
Morris at Kelmscott that
September, he "spent his
days in a haze of chloral
and whisky".[50] The next
summer he was much
improved, and both Alexa
Wilding and Jane sat for
him at Kelmscott, where he
created a soulful series of
dream-like portraits.[50] In
Alexa Wilding (1879) 1874, Morris reorganised The Day Dream (1880). The sitter is
his decorative arts firm, Jane Morris.[48][49]
cutting Rossetti out of the
business, and the polite fiction that both men were in residence with
Jane at Kelmscott could not be maintained. Rossetti abruptly left Kelmscott in July 1874 and never
returned. Toward the end of his life, he sank into a morbid state, darkened by his drug addiction to chloral
hydrate and increasing mental instability. He spent his last years as a recluse at Cheyne Walk.
On Easter Sunday, 1882, he died at the country house of a friend, where he had gone in a vain attempt to
recover his health, which had been destroyed by chloral as his wife's had been destroyed by laudanum. He
died of Bright's Disease, a disease of the kidneys from which he had been suffering for some time. He had
been housebound for some years on account of paralysis of the legs, though his chloral addiction is
believed to have been a means of alleviating pain from a botched hydrocele removal. He had been suffering
from alcohol psychosis for some time brought on by the excessive amounts of whisky he used to drown out
the bitter taste of the chloral hydrate. He is buried in the churchyard of All Saints at Birchington-on-Sea,
Kent, England.[51]

Collections and critical assessment

Tate Britain, Birmingham, Manchester, Salford Museum and Art
Galleries and Wightwick Manor National Trust, all contain large
collections of Rossetti's work; Salford was bequeathed a number of
works following the death of L. S. Lowry in 1976. Lowry was
president of the Newcastle-based 'Rossetti Society', which was
founded in 1966.[52] Lowry's private collection of works was
chiefly built around Rossetti's paintings and sketches of Lizzie
Siddal and Jane Morris, and notable pieces included Pandora,
Proserpine and a drawing of Annie Miller.

In an interview with Mervyn Levy, Lowry explained his

fascination with the Rossetti women in relation to his own work: "I
don't like his women at all, but they fascinate me, like a snake.
That's why I always buy Rossetti whenever I can. His women are The grave of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
really rather horrible. It's like a friend of mine who says he hates in the churchyard of All Saints,
my work, although it fascinates him."[53] The friend Lowry Birchington-on-Sea
referred to was businessman Monty Bloom, to whom he also
explained his obsession with Rossetti's portraits: "They are not real
women.[...] They are dreams.[...] He used them for something in
his mind caused by the death of his wife. I may be quite wrong
there, but significantly they all came after the death of his wife."[53]

The popularity, frequent reproduction, and general availability of

Rossetti's later paintings of women have led to this association with
"a morbid and languorous sensuality".[54] His small-scale early
works and drawings are less well known, but it is in these that his
originality, technical inventiveness, and significance in the
movement away from Academic tradition can best be seen.[55] As
Roger Fry wrote in 1916, "Rossetti more than any other artist since
Blake may be hailed as a forerunner of the new ideas" in English
Blue plaque at 16 Cheyne Walk
Art.[56]

Media
Film

Rossetti was played by Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's television film Dante's Inferno (1967). The Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood has been the subject of two BBC period dramas. The first, The Love School,
(1975) features Ben Kingsley as Rossetti. The second was Desperate Romantics, in which Rossetti is
played by Aidan Turner. It was broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday, 21 July 2009.[57]
Television

Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) appears in an episode of Cheers as Dante Gabriel Rossetti for his
Hallowe'en costume. His wife Dr. Lilith Sternin-Crane appears as Rossetti's sister, Christina. Their son
Frederick is dressed as Spiderman.[58]

Fiction
Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Rossetti family are characters in Tim Powers' novel "Hide Me
Among the Graves," in which both the Rossettis' uncle John Polidori and Gabriel's wife Lizzie act as hosts
for vampiric beings, and whose influence inspires the artistic genius of the family.

Influence
Rossetti's poem "The Blessed Damozel" was the inspiration for Claude Debussy's cantata La Damoiselle
élue (1888).

John Ireland (1879–1962) set to music as one of his Three Songs (1926), Rossetti's poem "The One Hope"
from Poems (1870).

In 1904 Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) created his song cycle The House of Life from six poems by
Rossetti. One song in that cycle, Silent Noon, is one of Vaughan Williams's best known and most
frequently performed songs.

In 1904, Phoebe Anna Traquair painted The Awakening, inspired by a sonnet from Rossetti's The House of
Life.[59]

There is evidence to suggest that a number of paintings by Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) were
influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Rossetti.[60]

Selected works

Books
The Early Italian Poets (a translation), 1861; republished as Dante and His Circle, 1874
Poems, 1870; revised and reissued as Poems. A New Edition, 1881
Ballads and Sonnets, 1881
The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 2 volumes, 1886 (posthumous)
Ballads and Narrative Poems, 1893 (posthumous)
Sonnets and Lyrical Poems, 1894 (posthumous)
The Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1911 (posthumous)[61]
Poems and Translations 1850–1870, Together with the Prose Story 'Hand and Soul', Oxford
University Press, 1913

Double works

"Rossetti divided his attention between painting and poetry for the rest of his life" - Poetry Foundation[4]
Aspecta Medusa (1865 October – 1868)
Astarte Syriaca (for a Picture; 1877 January–February; 1875–1877)
Beatrice, her Damozels, and Love (1865?)
Beauty and the Bird (1855; 1858 June 25)
The Blessed Damozel (1847–1870; 1871–1881)
Bocca Baciata (1859–1860)
Body's Beauty (1864–1869; 1866)
The Bride's Prelude [1848–1870 (circa)]
Cassandra (for a drawing; September 1869; 1860–1861, 1867, 1869)
Dante's Dream on the Day of the Death of Beatrice: 9 June 1290 (1875 [?], 1856)
Dante Alighieri. “Sestina. Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni.” (1848 [?], 1861, 1874)
Dante at Verona [1848–1850; 1852 (circa)]
The Day-Dream (for a picture; 1878–1880, 1880 September)
Death of A Wombat (6 November 1869)
Eden Bower [1863–1864 (circa) or 1869 (circa)]
Fazio's Mistress (1863; 1873)
Fiammetta [for a picture; 1878 (circa) 1878]
“Found” (for a picture; 1854; 1881 February)
Francesca Da Rimini. Dante (1855; 1862 September)
Guido Cavalcanti. “Ballata. He reveals, in a Dialogue, his increasing love for Mandetta.”
(1861)
Hand and Soul (1849)
Hero's Lamp (1875)
Introductory Sonnet ("A Sonnet is a moment's monument"; 1880)
Joan of Arc [1879 (unfinished), 1863, 1882]
La Bella Mano (for a picture; 1875)
La Pia. Dante (1868–1880)
Lisa ed Elviro (1843)
Love's Greeting (1850, 1861, 1864)
Mary's Girlhood [for a picture; 1848 (sonnet I), 1849 (sonnet II)]
Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (for a drawing; 1853–1859; 1869)
Michael Scott's Wooing (for a drawing; 1853, 1869–1871, 1875–1876)
Mnemosyne (1880)
Old and New Art [group of 3 poems; 1849 (text); 1857 (picture, circa)]
On William Morris (1871 September)
Pandora (for a picture; 1869; 1868–1871)
Parody on “Uncle Ned” (1852)
Parted Love! [1869 September – 1869 November (circa)]
The Passover in the Holy Family (for a drawing; 1849–1856; 1869 September)
Perlascura. Twelve Coins for One Queen (1878)
The Portrait (1869)
Proserpine (1872; 1871–1882)
The Question (for a design; 1875, 1882)
“Retro me, Sathana!” (1847, 1848)
The Return of Tibullus to Delia (1853–1855, 1867)
 A Sea-Spell (for a Picture; 1870, 1877)
The Seed of David (for a picture; 1864)
Silence. For a Design (1870, 1877)
Sister Helen [1851–1852; 1870 (circa)]
Sorrentino (1843)
Soul's Beauty (1866; 1864–1870)
St. Agnes of Intercession (1850; 1860)
Troy Town (1863–1864; 1869–1870)
Venus Verticordia (for a picture; 1868 January 16; 1863–1869)
William and Marie. A Ballad (1841)[62]

Paintings

Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), The Tune of the Seven Helen of Troy, 1863,
Tate Britain, London Towers (1857), watercolour, Kunsthalle Hamburg,
Tate Britain Hamburg, Germany

How Sir Galahad. Sir Bors, The Beloved (1865-1866) Found (1865–1869,
and Sir Percival were fed (Models:Marie Ford, Ellen unfinished), Delaware Art
with the Sanc Grael; But Sir Smith, Fanny Eaton, Keomi) Museum
Percival's Sister Died Along
the Way (1864), watercolour,
Tate Britain, London


The Blessed Damozel Lady Lilith (1867), Lady Lilith (1868), Delaware
(1871–1878; model: Alexa Metropolitan Museum of Art Art Museum (Fanny
Wilding) (model: Fanny Cornforth) Cornforth, overpainted at
Kelsmcott 1872–73 with the
face of Alexa Wilding)[63]

Beata Beatrix (1864–1870), Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Pia de' Tolomei (1868–
Tate Britain (model: Dress) (1868), Kelmscott 1880), Spencer Museum of
Elizabeth Siddal) Manor Art, University of Kansas,
Lawrence (model: Jane
Morris)


Mariana (1870; model: Jane Proserpine (1874; model: Roman Widow (1874:
Morris), Aberdeen Art Gallery Jane Morris) Tate Britain, model:Alexa Wilding),
London Museo de Arte de Ponce,
Ponce, Puerto Rico

A Vision of Fiammetta
(1878), one of Rossetti's last
paintings, now in the
collection of Andrew Lloyd
Webber (model: Marie
Spartali Stillman)

Drawings


La Belle Dame sans Drawing of Elizabeth Hamlet and Ophelia

Merci (1848), pen and Siddal reading (1854) (1858), pen and ink
sepia with some pencil drawing

Drawing of Annie Miller Portrait of Marie Drawing of Fanny

(1860) Spartali Stillman (1869) Cornforth, graphite on
paper (1869)

The Roseleaf (Portrait Ligeia Siren (1873),

of Jane Morris; 1870), colored chalk
graphite on wove paper

Woodcut illustrations


The Maids of Elphen- King Arthur and the Golden Head by Golden
Mere, Rossetti's first Weeping Queens, one of Head, illustration for
published woodcut two illustrations by Christina Rossetti's
illustration (1855) Rossetti for Edward Goblin Market and Other
Moxon's illustrated Poems (1862)
edition of Tennyson's
Poems (1857)

Decorative arts

Sir Tristram and la Belle

Ysoude drink the potion,
stained-glass panel by
Morris, Marshall,
Faulkner & Co., design
by Rossetti (1862–63)

Caricatures and sketches



Death of a Wombat William Morris reading to Mrs. Morris and the

(1869) Jane Morris while she Wombat (1869)
takes the waters at Bad
Ems (1869)

See also
English art
List of paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Rossetti and His Circle, 1922 book by Max Beerbohm
Rossetti–Polidori family tree (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Rossetti
_Polidori_family_tree.gif)
James Smetham

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External links
"The Rossetti Archive, a hypermedia archive of the complete writings and pictures of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti (and a lot of additional contextual information)" (http://www.rossettiarchive.o
rg/index.html). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20210415110407/http://www.rossettiar
chive.org/) from the original on 14 April 2021.
Works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (https://www.gutenberg.org/author/Rossetti,+Dante+Gabrie
l) at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Dante Gabriel Rossetti (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28su
bject%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%20Gabriel%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Rossett
i%2C%20Dante%20G%2E%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20D%2E%20
 G%2E%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Dante%20Gabriel%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20subj
ect%3A%22Dante%20G%2E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22D%2E%20G%2
E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%22%20OR%20su
bject%3A%22Dante%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Dante%20Gabriel%20Ro
ssetti%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Dante%20G%2E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20creato
r%3A%22D%2E%20G%2E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22D%2E%20Gabrie
l%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%20Gabriel%22%20
OR%20creator%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%20G%2E%22%20OR%20creator%3A%2
2Rossetti%2C%20D%2E%20G%2E%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20D%
2E%20Gabriel%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Dante%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20creato
r%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Dante%20Gabriel%20Ross
etti%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Dante%20G%2E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20title%3A%2
2D%2E%20G%2E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20title%3A%22Dante%20Rossetti%22%20O
R%20description%3A%22Dante%20Gabriel%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20description%3A%
22Dante%20G%2E%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20description%3A%22D%2E%20G%2E%20
Rossetti%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%20Gabriel%22%20O
R%20description%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%20G%2E%22%20OR%20description%
3A%22Dante%20Rossetti%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Rossetti%2C%20Dante%2
2%29%20OR%20%28%221828-1882%22%20AND%20Rossetti%29%29%20AND%20%2
8-mediatype:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (https://librivox.org/author/600) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
Archival material at Leeds University Library (https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-e
xplore/7436)
47 artworks by or after Dante Gabriel Rossetti (https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/search/act
or:rossetti-dante-gabriel-18281882) at the Art UK site
Paintings of Rossetti (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IhxPuek_Tc).
"Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery's" (http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/artist-
biography/dante-gabriel-rossetti/). preraphaelites.org.org. Archived (https://web.archive.org/
web/20090713200020/http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/artist-biography/dante-ga
briel-rossetti/) from the original on 13 July 2009.
"Website about Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth Siddal" (https://web.archive.org/web/20040325185
140/http://www.lizziesiddal.com/). Archived from the original (http://www.LizzieSiddal.com)
on 25 March 2004. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library.
Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti at English Poetry (http://www.eng-poetry.ru/english/Poet.p
hp?PoetId=13)

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