ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel

Featured Paintings in Detail

(2)

(paintings based on the episodes from Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri) 

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe Salutation of Beatrice1859Oil on panel, 160 x 74.9 cm   National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe Salutation of Beatrice(detail)1859Oil on panel, 160 x 74.9 cm   National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe Salutation of Beatrice(detail)1859Oil on panel, 160 x 74.9 cm   National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe Salutation of Beatrice(detail)1859Oil on panel, 160 x 74.9 cm   National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe Salutation of Beatrice(detail)1859Oil on panel, 160 x 74.9 cm   National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel 1853 Watercolor on paper, 41 x 61 cm  Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (detail)1853 Watercolor on paper, 41 x 61 cm  Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (detail)1853 Watercolor on paper, 41 x 61 cm  Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (detail)1853 Watercolor on paper, 41 x 61 cm  Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel (detail)1853 Watercolor on paper, 41 x 61 cm  Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielBeatrice, Meeting Dante at a Wedding Feast, Denies him her Salutation 1855 Watercolor on paper, 35.1 x 42.5 cm   Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielBeatrice, Meeting Dante at a Wedding Feast, Denies him her Salutation (detail)1855 Watercolor on paper, 35.1 x 42.5 cm   Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielBeatrice, Meeting Dante at a Wedding Feast, Denies him her Salutation (detail)1855 Watercolor on paper, 35.1 x 42.5 cm   Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielBeatrice, Meeting Dante at a Wedding Feast, Denies him her Salutation (detail)1855 Watercolor on paper, 35.1 x 42.5 cm   Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice 1856watercolor on paper, 48.7 × 66.2 cm Tate Britain, London

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (detail)1856watercolor on paper, 48.7 × 66.2 cm Tate Britain, London

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (detail)1856watercolor on paper, 48.7 × 66.2 cm Tate Britain, London

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (detail)1856watercolor on paper, 48.7 × 66.2 cm Tate Britain, London

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (detail)1856watercolor on paper, 48.7 × 66.2 cm Tate Britain, London

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream1869-71 Oil on canvas, 216 x 312.4cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream (detail)1869-71 Oil on canvas, 216 x 312.4cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream (detail)1869-71 Oil on canvas, 216 x 312.4cm Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

ROSSETTI, Dante Gabriel, Featured Paintings in Detail (2)

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So gentle and so pure appearsmy lady when she greets others,that every tongue trembles and is mute,and their eyes do not dare gaze at her.

She goes by, aware of their praise,benignly dressed in humility:and seems as if she were a thing comefrom Heaven to Earth to show a miracle.

She shows herself so pleasing to those who gaze,through the eyes she sends a sweetness to the heart,that no one can understand who does not know it:

and from her lips there comesa sweet spirit full of love,that goes saying to the soul: ‘Sigh.’

Dante Alighieri[Vita Nuova XXVI 5-7]

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice

1856Tate Britain, London

This painting features Rossetti's muse Jane Morris as Beatrice. It represents Dante's dream on the day Beatrice died. Love (with the arrow) leads him to her beside. The poppies signify the sleep of death

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe Salutation of Beatrice

1859

The panels depict scenes from the "Vita nuova" and the "Divine Comedy" by the 13th-century Italian poet, Dante Alighieri: the meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Florence and their meeting after death, in Paradise.

The work was conceived as a wedding present for William Morris, whose wife Jane was the model for Beatrice on Earth. Rossetti also designed the frame, incorporating quotations from the poems. Between the two subjects, the death of Beatrice is symbolized by a shadow on the sundial.

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielThe First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice: Dante Drawing the Angel

1853

Dante recalls how he drew an angel on the anniversary of Beatrice's death: 'and while I did this, 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... perceiving whom, I arose for salutation, and said: "Another was with me".

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielBeatrice, Meeting Dante at a Wedding Feast, Denies him her Salutation

1855

The picture shows Dante dressed in a full-length red tunic and leaning on a wall frescoed with light blue angels. A small girl wearing a gold coloured dress offers him flowers. Directly behind her is the figure of Beatrice flanked by two dark-haired bridesmaids.

Beatrice is walking in a bridesmaid's procession towards the wedding feast. Dante gazes at his beloved as she passes but she looks haughtily at him. Beatrice, disapproving of Dante's attentions to another woman, refuses to greet him when they meet at a marriage feast. Beatrice does not know that he has only pretended to favour the other woman in order

to conceal his purer love for her.

The artist often identified himself with the poet whose name he shared. And Beatrice became for him the poetic counterpart of his lover Elizabeth Siddall who by this date was living with him. She was the model for the figure of Beatrice in this watercolour. Later she was immortalised in Rossetti's famous 'Beata Beatrix' which commemorates her tragic and self-

inflicted death in 1862 from an overdose of laudanum.

ROSSETTI, Dante GabrielDante's Dream

1869-71 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Rossetti's largest and most magnificent painting is also the most elaborate of his Dante subjects. It was conceived as early as 1848 and painted first in watercolour in 1856.

It represents the episode in the 'Vita Nuova' when Dante dreams of seeing Beatrice in death. Dante is led to Beatrice by the winged figure of Love, dressed in red, wearing the scallop shell of a pilgrim. Love carries a branch of apple-blossom, a spring flower and a symbol of unconsummated love, plucked before it comes to fruit. Poppies, the flower of sleep or death,

litter the floor. The veil is laden with may-blossom, perhaps alluding to the season of Beatrice's death (June 9). A view of Florence is seen in the background.

The group of British artists and writers calling themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a founding member, aspired

to an aesthetic based on early Italian Renaissance art and the direct observation of nature, in contrast to what they saw as the overblown and insincere British

academic style.Rossetti never adhered to the hyper-detailed depiction of nature characteristic of some Pre-Raphaelite artists like William Holman

Hunt, instead developing a more romantic, poetic style.

Rossetti found a rich source of inspiration in the works of his namesake, thirteenth-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri.

In 1848 Rossetti translated La Vita Nuova from Italian . In this poem, and in the Divine Comedy, Dante charts his love for the

young Beatrice and his grief at her early death. It was at this time that Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal and became obssessed with the

parallel of their lives and the Renaissance lovers. He used Elizabeth as a model for Beatrice. Her early death re-inforced this

association.