THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD

THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD

In the 1848 the young painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, H. Hunt, J. Millais and T. Woolner founded the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood", so called because they advocated a return to the purity of late Medieval Italian art (à Rossetti has in part Italian origins) , before the stylisation that set in with Raphael and his followers. Their watchword was "Back to nature!" à a return to the simplicity tempered with mysticism (à not religious sense) of the Middle Ages (à medieval things, thoughts and mitology), when spiritual values were held high and mechanisation had not yet destroyed individual creativity. They opposed to the materialism and ugliness of industrial England the legendary age of chivalry and of Celtic fables.

Two aspects: sensuality and realism

Pre-Raphaelite painters reacted to the academic style by infusing their work with a note of languorous sensuality and a symbolism (à symbol that climbing from Nature especially flowers) mainly derived from literary sources such as Dante's Vita Nuova (because he was Italian and he wrote every kind of work). Their sensual veiled women, in languid poses, with their wasting sensuality, brought to light the existence of passions that Victorian literature had repressed (à these works provoked great scandals).

The Pre-Raphaelite also believed in great technical ability as an antidote to superficiality of feeling and expression. They were obsessed with the detailed reconstruction of reality, to the point of exactly, reproducing the cracks in the wood of a piece of furniture or a newspaper's text.

The Rossetti family circle

The leading personalities in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family (the brother William Michael, a critic, and his sister Christina Georgina). Their father was the Italian patriot Gabriele Rossetti (from Abruzzo) who after the failure of the Neapolitan Carbonari insurrection of 1821 had fled to England. Their mother was half-English and half-Italian. Their household in London was a centre of artistic and literary discussion.

A painter and a poet: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-l882)

He showed an early talent for poetry and painting. He read much Romantic literature and also Dante (à he translated Vita Nuova in 1845). His first important poem was The blessed Damozel, inspired by Poe and Keats' medieval compositions. Set in the Middle ages, it tells of a dead girl who looks down to earth from heaven and wishes to be united with her lover who is still on earth.

Rossetti's private life was upset by the suicide of his wife in 1862. In 1881 he published The house of life, a collection of 101 sonnets on love and death, partly inspired by his wife's death. A critic of his work increased in him a persecution mania that lasted till his death in 1882.

A modern mystic: Christina Rossetti

Owing to precarious health she led a very retired life an though she started to write at an early age her first published work, Goblin market and other poems (1862). Her inspiration was mainly religious. She dedicated herself to reflection and she refused twice to marry. Her poems are full of passion but more restrained, simpler and more effective than her brother's in clearly identifying the dualism of nature and spirit. The dominant note of her compositions is death (often visions).