\paperw4995 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 \ATXsh255 English poet and painter.\par
The son of an Italian patriot exiled to London, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the founder
s of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, along with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Young students at the Royal Academy in London, the Pre-Raphaelites attacked the English art system for its lack of vigor, seriousness, and sincerity û qualities
they found in fifteenth century painting that had flowered in Italy and Northern Europe, before the High Renaissance of Raphael. They did not set out to imitate the style of these artists, but admired their ability to ôgo toward nature,ö as the critic J
ohn Ruskin put it, and to ôtackle serious and loftyö subjects.\par
The same attitude had been taken earlier by the Nazarenes, German artists who had rebelled against classicist academicism at the beginning of the century in an attempt to bring art back
ôonto the road of truth,ö basing their painting on religious and patriotic foundations.\par
The most influential exponent of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, thanks in part to his poetry, Rossetti developed a deep admiration for the ôprimitiveö Italian pain
ters and poets, for BlakeÆs visionary reinterpretations of Dante, and subsequently for the medieval world of the Arthurian legends. His early works û \i The Girlhood of Mary Virgin\i0 (1849) and \i Ecce ancilla Domini\i0 (1850, London, Tate Gallery) û
are typically Pre-Raphaelite attempts to reinterpret the mystical candor of painters like Fra Angelico.\par
Yet RossettiÆs religious fervor remained a largely aesthetic attitude, evident above all in the later developments of his painting. Even his styl
e quickly turned from the Pre-Raphaelite aspiration to the faithful representation of nature and toward its transformation into decorative elements.\par
The ambiguity of RossettiÆs inspiration û a combination of the spiritual, aesthetic, and morbid û an
ticipated Decadence and found concrete expression in the series of female figures depicted in his paintings, halfway between idealized women and disturbing, tormented creatures (\i The Blessed Damozel\i0 , 1875-79, Port Sunlight, Lady Lever Art Gallery).
