Rossetti's family, as his name indicates, was of Italian origin. His
ancestors on his father's side belong to Vasto d'Ammone, a small city
of the Abruzzi. The original name of the family was Della Guardia.
Probably the diminutive Rossetti was given to some red-haired ancestor
and retained in spite of the disappearance of that peculiarity. The
grandfather of the poet, Dominico Rossetti, was in the iron trade,
his son Gabriel Rossetti, born at Vasto, became a custodian of the
Bourbon Museum at Naples. He was an ardent patriot and one of the group
of reformers who obtained a constitution from Ferdinand, King of the
Two Sicilies, in 1820. The return of the King with the Austrian army
obliged Gabriel Rossetti, who was compromised by his actions as well
as by his patriotic songs, to make his escape from Italy. He did this
by the help of the English admiral, commanding the fleet in the bay.
Indeed he left Italy disguised in an English uniform.
[Illustration: PLATE II.--ECCE ANCILLA DOMINI
From the oil painting (28½ in. by 17 in.) painted in 1850 and is
now in the Tate Gallery
This picture was first exhibited in 1850 at the "Free Exhibition"
in Portland Place. It was very slightly retouched in 1873 for the
then owner, Mr. Graham. It is rightly considered the most typical of
Rossetti's "Pre-Raphaelite" period.]
After passing three years in Malta (1822-1825), he came to England
bearing introductions from John Hookham Frere, then Governor of Malta.
A year after his arrival he married Frances Mary Livinia Polidori,
whose mother was an English lady of the name of Pierce, while her
father was Gaetano Polidori, the translator of Milton. Gabriel Rossetti
was appointed Professor of Italian literature at King's College in
1831; but owing to the failure of his eyesight he had to resign that
position in 1845. He died nine years after, on April 26th, 1854.
He is the author of several works, the best known in England are:
_Comento analitico sulla Divina Commedia_ (1826-1827); _Sullo Spirito
Anti-Papale_ (1832); and _Il Mistero dell' Amor Platonic_ (1840). In
Italy, particularly in his own province, his name is held in veneration
for services in the cause of liberty. He had four children, the eldest,
Maria Francesca, the author of "A Shadow of Dante," died in 1876.
Dante Gabriel was the second and was born the 12th of May 1828 at 38
Charlotte Street, Great Portland Place, London. William Michael was the
third, and Christina was the youngest.
Very little is known of the early life of Rossetti. He received some
instruction at a private school in Foley Street, Portland Place,
studying there from the autumn of 1836 to the summer of 1837. He was
afterwards sent to King's College School. There he learned Latin,
French, and a little Greek. Naturally enough he knew Italian very well
from home and also a little German. In his home surroundings the young
child's taste for literature was developed very early; at five years
old he wrote a drama called "The Slave." Towards his thirteenth year he
began a romantic tale in prose, "Roderick and Rosalba." Somewhere about
1843 he wrote a legendary tale entitled "Sir Hugh Le Heron," founded on
a tale by Allan Cunningham. His grandfather Gaetano Polidori printed
it himself for private circulation, but the work contains no sign of
his ultimate development and has been justly omitted from his collected
works. Soon the wish to be a painter took possession of Dante Gabriel
and, on leaving school, he began his technical education in art at
Cary's Academy in Bloomsbury. In 1846 he joined the classes of the
Antique School of the Royal Academy. It is worth pointing out that
he never followed the Life School of that institution. Conventional
methods of study were distasteful to him. He decided to throw up the
Academy training and wrote to a painter, not very well known at that
date but whose work he admired, asking to be admitted to his studio
as a pupil. The painter was Madox Brown, and young Rossetti, given
his needs and mode of thought, could not have chosen a more suitable
master. Madox Brown was only seven years older than Rossetti, but he
had studied at Ghent, Antwerp, Paris, and Rome. He had exhibited some
fine cartoons during the early forties for the decoration of the House
of Lords. Among these was one that Rossetti had greatly admired at the
exhibition of the competitive cartoons in Westminster Hall. It was
"Harold's body brought before William the Conqueror." In March 1848
Rossetti entered upon his new experience and Madox Brown agreed to
teach him painting, not for a fee but for the mere pleasure of meeting
and training a sympathetic spirit. Rossetti did not long remain a
regular attendant in the studio. He left after a few months.
On the opening day of the exhibition (May 1848), "Rossetti," says
Mr. Hunt, "came up boisterously and in loud tongue made me feel very
confused by declaring that mine was the best picture of the year. The
fact that it was from Keats ('The Eve of St. Agnes') made him extra
enthusiastic, for, I think, no painter had ever before painted from
that wonderful poet, who then, it may scarcely be credited, was little
known." Rossetti wished so earnestly to become more intimate with Hunt
that he agreed to work with him, sharing a studio that the latter had
just taken in Cleveland Street, Fitzroy Square. Here he began to paint
his first composition, having hitherto done no more than studies,
sketches, a number of portraits, some of which reveal excellent work.
At this time his literary development was somewhat ahead of his
artistic growth. He had already translated the _Vita Nuova_ which
is alone a monumental achievement, introducing wonderfully into the
English the warmth of the southern language; and he had written some
of his best known poems, including "The Blessed Damozel," "My Sister's
Sleep," "The Portrait," a considerable portion of "Ave," "A last
Confession," and the "Bride's Prelude."
Millais and Holman Hunt, whose friendship dated from the Academy
Schools, found ground for sympathetic union with Rossetti in their
common distaste for contemporary art. They were convinced it was
necessary to abandon the conventional style of the day and return to
a severe and conscientious study of nature. They were for a while
uncertain as to the path to pursue. Where should they turn for precept
and guidance on the line of their new-found principles? Looking through
a book of engravings from the Campo Santo of Pisa one day at Millais'
house, they thought they had found there the direction they sought.
Mr. Holman Hunt tells us that the foundation of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood was the immediate result of coming across the book at that
particular time.
While Holman Hunt was painting "Rienzi swearing revenge over his
brother's corpse," and Millais, "Lorenzo and Isabella," Rossetti began
his "Girlhood of Mary Virgin." As can well be imagined that first
composition gave him endless trouble and was the cause of the most
violent fits of alternate depression and energy. But the following
spring (1849), the three pictures were ready for exhibition. Millais
and Hunt were hung in the Royal Academy Exhibition and Rossetti's in
the so-called Free Exhibition, which was held in a gallery at Hyde
Park Corner. In the "Girlhood of Mary Virgin," he represents a room
in the Virgin's home with a balcony on which her father, St. Joachim,
is seen tending a vine which grows up towards the top of the picture.
On the right, against a dark green curtain, are the figures of St.
Anna and the Virgin sitting at an embroidery frame. The mother, in
dark green and brown garments with a dull red head-dress, is watching
with clasped hands the work in front of her. The young girl, a quite
unconventional Madonna dressed in grey, pauses with a needle in her
hand gazing in front of her at a child angel holding a white lily.
Underneath the pot in which the white lily grows are six big books
bearing the names of the six cardinal virtues. The figures, as well
as the dove which is perched on the trellis, bear halos, their names
being inscribed within. Rossetti painted his mother for St. Anna and
his sister Christina for the Virgin. Changing her dark brown hair to
golden, he broke a rule of the Brotherhood, which decrees that the
artist shall copy his model most scrupulously. The picture was signed
with his name, followed by the three letters P.R.B. Rossetti having
revealed the meaning of these three letters to a friend it was soon
generally known and no peace was given to those who dared to stand up
against traditional authority. It is necessary to explain that, at that
time, Raphael was considered the greatest of all painters. All who came
before him were ignored and a set of fixed rules supposed to have been
deduced from his work was taught in all the schools. The revolt of the
"Brethren" was directed much more against those rules than against
Raphael's work which, in all probability, they hardly knew.
[Illustration: PLATE III.--DANTE DRAWING THE ANGEL
From the water-colour (16½ in. by 24 in.) painted in 1853 and
first exhibited in the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition at Russell
Place in 1857. It is now in the Taylorian Museum at Oxford
The subject of this water-colour is taken from the following passage
in the Vita Nuova:
"On that day which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made
of the citizens of eternal life, remembering me of her as I sat
alone, I betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon
certain tablets. And while I did thus, chancing to turn my head I
perceived that some were standing beside me, to whom I should have
given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what I did:
also I learned afterwards that they had been there awhile before I
perceived them. Perceiving whom, I arose for salutation and said:
'Another was with me.'"
The same incident has been commemorated by Robert Browning in his
"One Word More."]
At about the same time that he painted "Mary's Girlhood," Rossetti did
a portrait in oils of his father, his first work of this kind. He also
drew an outline design of a lute player and his lady, a subject taken
from Coleridge's "Genevieve"; a pen-and-ink drawing of "Gretchen in
the Chapel," with Mephistopheles whispering in her ear, and "The Sun
may shine and we be cold," a sketch of a girl near a window, apparently
a prisoner. To this period also belongs the important pen-and-ink
drawing, "Il Saluto di Beatrice," representing in two parts the meeting
of Dante and Beatrice, first in a street of Florence and secondly in
Paradise.
The most important of Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite work during the two
years following 1848 is the "Ecce Ancilla Domini," quite in keeping in
sentiment with the picture of the previous year. Both these pictures
are a little timid in treatment. In the "Ecce Ancilla Domini," the
Virgin clad in white is sitting on her bed, as if just awakened, and
sees with awe the full length of an angel, also clad in white, floating
in front of her and holding a white lily in his hand. The walls are
white but there is a blue curtain behind the Virgin's head and a red
embroidery on its frame is standing in the foreground at the foot
of the bed. The drapery of the angel is a little stiff and the whole
effect rather hard, but notwithstanding this youthful fault the whole
work is restrained and full of charm both in drawing and colour.
This picture was exhibited in 1850 at the same Free Exhibition, which
was moved this year from Hyde Park Corner to Portland Place.
The Pre-Raphaelites were now attacked by the press still more fiercely
than before, but they found a champion in Ruskin who took up their
defence in a series of letters to the _Times_, and in so doing laid
down an elaborate statement of principles. Thus it came about that the
broad and possibly nebulous ideas of the Brethren became transmuted
into hard and fast rules, which the young painters had to accept,
partly out of gratitude to their benefactor, partly because they agreed
with them. Rossetti painted only three pictures strictly according
to the Pre-Raphaelite rules. Curiously enough the best genuine
Pre-Raphaelite picture is "Work" by Ford Madox Brown, who not believing
in cliques refused to join the group.
Round Rossetti were grouped his brother, William Michael, his sister
Christina, with Woolner, Collinson, Deverell, Millais, Hunt, Madox
Brown, William Bell Scott, and Coventry Patmore. Of all these Hunt and
Millais alone showed no inclination for writing. The group naturally
formed a school of literary thought of which "The Germ," originated by
Rossetti to propagate the ideas of the P.R.B., was the outcome.
The cumbrous title "Monthly Thoughts in Literature, Poetry, and Art,"
was first intended to be the title of this special publication of the
brotherhood, but at a meeting held in Rossetti's studio, 72 Newman
Street, in December 1849, when the first number was just ready for
publication it was decided to change the name for the simple title
"The Germ." This was proposed by Mr. Cave Thomas, an intimate friend of
the group.
To the first number Rossetti contributed "My Sister's Sleep," and
a prose romance "Hand and Soul." Following numbers contained "The
Blessed Damozel," "The Carillon," "Sea limits" (under the title "From
the Cliffs"), and several sonnets. Only the first two numbers of the
publication were called "The Germ." The publication was known as "Art
and Poetry" in the third and fourth issues.
"The Germ," as its short career showed, did not meet with success,
but it served to establish Rossetti's reputation among a small group
of artists and admirers. Rossetti's literary contributions were far
more matured than his paintings and it is surprising that they did
not attract more attention. "Hand and Soul" is specially valuable as
bearing a record of psychological experiences which gives a clear
glimpse of Rossetti's mind.