Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1828-1882

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was an English painter, poet, and translator who cofounded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Born in London to an Italian émigré father and educated in a bohemian household steeped in Dante and medieval Italian art, Rossetti rejected academic convention to pursue a more authentic vision of art drawn from Quattrocento painting and literature. His early works, including The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, displayed precise, jewel-like detail on white grounds. From the 1860s onward, his style deepened into dense, sensual compositions dominated by single female figures in rich, mythological settings—paintings like Beatrice Beatrix and Proserpina that united visual art with accompanying verse. Though he rarely exhibited publicly, Rossetti's work profoundly influenced his contemporaries and the Symbolist movement. His later years were marked by declining health, troubled by personal anguish and increasing dependence on alcohol and drugs, until his death from Bright's disease in 1882.