The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Frederic George Stephens and Thomas Woolner who formed a seven-member "Brotherhood" partly modelled on the Nazarene movement. The Brotherhood was only ever a loose association and their principles were shared by other artists of the time, including Ford Madox Brown, Arthur Hughes and Marie Spartali Stillman. Later followers of the principles of the Brotherhood included Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John William Waterhouse.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an English poet, illustrator, painter, 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.
Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, better known as Elizabeth Siddal, was an English artist, art model, and poet. Siddal was perhaps the most significant of the female models who posed for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their ideas of female beauty were fundamentally influenced and personified by her. Walter Deverell and William Holman Hunt painted Siddal, and she was the model for John Everett Millais's famous painting Ophelia (1852). Early in her relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Siddal became his muse and exclusive model, and he portrayed her in almost all his early artwork depicting women.
The Walker Art Gallery is an art gallery in Liverpool, which houses one of the largest art collections in England outside London. It is part of the National Museums Liverpool group.
The Lady Lever Art Gallery is a museum founded and built by the industrialist and philanthropist William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme and opened in 1922. The Lady Lever Art Gallery is set in the garden village of Port Sunlight, on the Wirral and one of the National Museums Liverpool.
Jane Morris was an English embroiderer in the Arts and Crafts movement and an artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to her husband William Morris and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her sister was the embroiderer and teacher Elizabeth Burden.
Marie Stillman was a British member of the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Of the Pre-Raphaelites, she had one of the longest-running careers, spanning sixty years and producing over one hundred and fifty works. Though her work with the Brotherhood began as a favourite model, she soon trained and became a respected painter, earning praise from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others.
"The Blessed Damozel" is perhaps the best known poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as the title of his painting illustrating the subject. The poem was first published in 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite journal The Germ. Rossetti subsequently revised the poem twice and republished it in 1856, 1870 and 1873.
Beata Beatrix is a painting completed in several versions by Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The painting depicts Beatrice Portinari from Dante Alighieri's 1294 poem La Vita Nuova at the moment of her death. The first version is oil on canvas completed in 1870.
Dante and Beatrice is a painting dated 1883 by the artist Henry Holiday that is on display in the Walker Art Gallery, in Liverpool, England. It is considered to be Holiday's most important painting. It is executed in oil on canvas, measuring 142.2 centimetres (56 in) by 203.2 centimetres (80 in) and was purchased by the gallery in 1884.
Lady Lilith is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti first painted in 1866–1868 using his mistress Fanny Cornforth as the model, then altered in 1872–73 to show the face of Alexa Wilding. The subject is Lilith, who was, according to ancient Judaic myth, "the first wife of Adam" and is associated with the seduction of men and the murder of children. She is shown as a "powerful and evil temptress" and as "an iconic, Amazon-like female with long, flowing hair."
Found is an unfinished oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, now in the Delaware Art Museum. The painting is Rossetti's only treatment in oil of a contemporary moral subject, urban prostitution, and although the work remained incomplete at Rossetti's death in 1882, he always considered it one of his most important works, returning to it many times from the mid-1850s until the year before his death.
The Beloved is an oil painting on canvas by the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), now in Tate Britain, London. Rossetti signed his initials and the date as "1865-6" on the bottom left of the canvas. It depicts the bride, or "beloved", from the Song of Solomon in the Hebrew Bible as she approaches her bridegroom, with her attendants.
Pia de' Tolomei is an oil painting on canvas by English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted around 1868 and now in the Spencer Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
Proserpine is an oil painting on canvas by English artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted in 1874 and now in Tate Britain. Rossetti began work on the painting in 1871 and painted at least eight separate versions, the last only completed in 1882, the year of his death. Early versions were promised to Charles Augustus Howell. The painting discussed in this article is the so-called seventh version commissioned by Frederick Richards Leyland, now at the Tate Gallery, with the very similar final version now at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Mnemosyne, also titled Lamp of Memory and Ricordanza, is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti begun in 1875 or early 1876 and completed in 1881. Jane Morris was the model, and Frederick Richards Leyland bought the painting in 1881 and displayed it in his drawing room with five other Rossetti "stunners." At about the same time Rossetti, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was painting Astarte Syriaca, a larger painting completed in 1877 with Morris in a very similar pose.
Water Willow is an 1871 oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It depicts Jane Morris in the river landscape near Kelmscott Manor, with the manor in the left background and Kelmscott Church below the hill to the right.
The Day Dream or, as it was initially intended to be named, Monna Primavera, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founder member Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The work, which measures 158.7 centimetres (62.5 in) high by 92.7 centimetres (36.5 in) wide, was undertaken in 1880 and depicts Jane Morris in a seated position on the bough of a sycamore tree. In her hand is a small stem of honeysuckle – a token of love in the Victorian era – that may be an indication of the secret affair the artist was immersed in with her at the time. The artwork was left to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Constantine Alexander Ionides in 1900.
A Sea-Spell is an oil painting of 1877 and an accompanying sonnet of 1869 by the English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, depicting a siren playing an instrument to lure sailors. It is now in the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Venus Verticordia (1864–1868) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti is a semi-nude depiction of the goddess Venus, portrayed as a young woman with a golden halo and flowing auburn hair, surrounded by pink flowers in a dark, lush green garden. Her left breast is visible, while the right is obscured by the golden apple she holds in her left hand. In her right hand she holds an arrow, the point directed towards her own heart, and on which rests a small yellow butterfly. Other similar butterflies ring the halo surrounding her head, and another sits on top of the apple she holds.
