Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 34: The Post-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a poet and painter, and was a co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of British painters who wanted to revive the style and look of painting from 15th century Italy and Flanders. His paintings were usually of classical, mythological, or religious subjects; his only attempt at a modern painting as part of the Brotherhood went unfinished.

Rossetti was also a translator, and his work on titles like Dante's La Vita Nuova and Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur also influenced his painting (art inspired by literature was common among the Brotherhood). 

Rossetti's personal life also had a strong influence on his work, and vice versa. He had several relationships with his models, including a two year marriage to Elizabeth Siddal, which ended when she overdosed on laudanum (possibly on purpose, as the overdose happened not long after she gave birth to a stillborn child). Rossetti buried the bulk of his unpublished poems with Siddal, though friends would later convince him to dig them up for publication.

Unfortunately, the public reaction to his first volume of poetry was quite negative, finding the poems too erotic or sensual. Rossetti suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the bad reviews, and it took him a couple of years to recover to the point where he could paint again. That period was short lived, and his mental state went back into decline. His physical health wasn't much better, between a dependence on chloral hydrate and heavy drinking to mask the drug's bitter taste. Rossetti died on April 9, 1882, of Bright's disease (a form of nephritis).