Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (mk28) Painting ID:: 24415 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-532339.jpg
Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (mk28) 1855 Watercolour on paper 35.5 x 31.5 cm Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Weding of St George and the Princess Sabra (mk28) Painting ID:: 24417 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-664992.jpg
The Weding of St George and the Princess Sabra (mk28) 1857
Watercolour on paper 36.5 x 36.5 cm Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Tune of Seven Towers (mk28) Painting ID:: 24418 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-874863.jpg
The Tune of Seven Towers (mk28) 1857 Watercolour on paper 31.4 x 36.5 cm Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti St Catherine (mk28) Painting ID:: 24419 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-734275.jpg
St Catherine (mk28) 1857
Oil on canvas 34.3 x 24.1 cm Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti A Christmas Carol (mk28) Painting ID:: 24420 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-672485.jpg
A Christmas Carol (mk28) 1857-8 Watercolour and Gouache on paper,Mounted on panel 34.3 x 29.7 cm Fogg Museum of Art,Harvard University,Cambridge, MA
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Seed of David (mk28) Painting ID:: 24421 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-874383.jpg
The Seed of David (mk28) 1858-64 Oil on canvas centre panel of triptych 228.5 x 152 cm Wings 185 x 62 cm
Llandaff Cathedral Cardiff
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Writing on the Sand (mk28) Painting ID:: 24422 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-832287.jpg
Writing on the Sand (mk28) 1859 Watercolour on paper 26.5 x 24 cm British Museum, London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel (mk28) Painting ID:: 24423 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-634863.jpg
Sir Galahad at the Ruined Chapel (mk28) 1859 Watercolour and bodycolour on paper 29.1 x 34.5 cm Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Bocca Baciata (mk28) Painting ID:: 24424 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-836927.jpg
Bocca Baciata (mk28) 1859 Oil on panel 32.2 x 27.1 cm Museum of Fine Arts Boston MA
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dantis Amor (mk28) Painting ID:: 24425 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-726544.jpg
Dantis Amor (mk28) 1860 Oil on panel 74.9 x 81.3 cm
Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Fair Rosamund (mk28) Painting ID:: 24426 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-975549.jpg
Fair Rosamund (mk28) 1861 Oil on canvas 52 x 42 cm National Museum of Wales,Cardiff
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Sermon on the Mount (mk28) Painting ID:: 24427 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-863948.jpg
The Sermon on the Mount (mk28) 1862 Stained glass South nave window All Saints Selsley Gloucestershire
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Portrait of Maria Leathart (mk28) Painting ID:: 24428 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-399953.jpg
Portrait of Maria Leathart (mk28) 1862 Oil on panel 33 x 30 cm Family collection
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Girl at a Lattice (mk28) Painting ID:: 24429 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-448722.jpg
Girl at a Lattice (mk28) 1862 oil on canvas 30.5 x 27 cm Fitzwilliam Museum University of Cambridge
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Helen of Troy (mk28) Painting ID:: 24430 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-964539.jpg
Helen of Troy (mk28) 1863 Oil on panel 31 x 27 cm Hamburger Kunsthalle
Dante Gabriel Rossetti How Sir Galahad,Sir Bors and Sir Percival were Fed with the Sanc Grael But Sir Percival's Sister Died by the Way (mk28) Painting ID:: 24431 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-969652.jpg
How Sir Galahad,Sir Bors and Sir Percival were Fed with the Sanc Grael But Sir Percival's Sister Died by the Way (mk28) 1864 Watercolour on paper 29.2 x 41.9 cm Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Beata Beatrix (mk28) Painting ID:: 24432 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-663846.jpg
Beata Beatrix (mk28) 1864-70 Oil on canvas 86 x 66 cm Tate Gallery London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Venus Verticordia (mk28) Painting ID:: 24433 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-374627.jpg
Venus Verticordia (mk28) 1864-8 Oil on canvas 98 x 70 cm Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum Bournemouth
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Study for Venus Verticordia (mk28) Painting ID:: 24434 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-752442.jpg
Study for Venus Verticordia (mk28) c 1863 Chalk on paper 77.5 x 62 cm
Faringdon Collection Trust,Buscot Park Oxfordshire
Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blue Bower (mk28) Painting ID:: 24435 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-399699.jpg
The Blue Bower (mk28) 1865 Oil on canvas 90 x 69 cm Barber Institute of Fine Arts University of Birmingham
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Regina Cordium (mk28) Painting ID:: 24436 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-456223.jpg
Regina Cordium (mk28) 1866 Oil on canvas 59.7 x 49.5 cm Art Gallery and Museum,Kelvingrove,Glasgow
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Sibylla Palmifera (mk28) Painting ID:: 24437 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-762298.jpg
Sibylla Palmifera (mk28) 1866-70 Oil on canvas 94 x 82.5 cm Lady Lever Art Gallery,port Sunlight
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Reverie (mk28) Painting ID:: 24438 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-389999.jpg
Reverie (mk28) 1868 Chalk on paper 84 x 71 cm Ashmolean Museum Oxford
Dante Gabriel Rossetti John Parsons Jane Morris (mk28) Painting ID:: 24439 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-686479.jpg
John Parsons Jane Morris (mk28) 1865 Photograph Victoria and Albert Museum,London
Dante Gabriel Rossetti La Piia de'Tolomei (mk28) Painting ID:: 24440 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-689932.jpg
La Piia de'Tolomei (mk28) c 1868-80 Oil on canvas 105.8 x 120.6 cm Spencer Museum of Art,University of Kansas,Lawrence,KS
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Mariana (mk28) Painting ID:: 24441 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-453525.jpg
Mariana (mk28) 1870 Oil on canvas 109 x 89 cm Aberdeen Art Gallery
Dante Gabriel Rossetti La Donna della Fiamma (mk28) Painting ID:: 24442 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-927627.jpg
La Donna della Fiamma (mk28) 1870 Chalk on paper 100.5 x 75 cm City Art Galleries Manchester
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Water Willow (mk28) Painting ID:: 24443 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-968987.jpg
Water Willow (mk28) 1871 Oil on canvas 33 x 26.7 cm Samuel and Mary R Bancroft Memorial,Delaware Art Museum,Wilmingron,DE
Dante Gabriel Rossetti Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (mk28) Painting ID:: 24444 new8/Dante Gabriel Rossetti-766929.jpg
Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (mk28) 1871 Oil on canvas 211 x 317.5 cm Walker Art Gallery,Liverpool
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.