Complete Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

His preference was for religious subject-matter but as he matured as an artist his work proved most divisive because of his habit of using family members and lovers to represent holy icons. Rossetti is recognized predominantly as a portraitist.He took inspiration in the purity and symbolism of medieval and religious fables found in 15th-century Florentine and Sienese painting As a leading light in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement, Rossetti looked back to a period before the High Renaissance.But with time, his destructive lifestyle led to his mental decline, but as often happens with after some time, this merely enhanced his legend as a prodigious maverick of the Victorian age. His licentious lifestyle, though condemned by many of his colleagues, breathed erotic life, and it must be said, genuine personality, into his art.

He continued to paint his mythical parables with the same luminosity and attention to the finest picture detail, but Rossetti, who harboured longings to be recognised also the poet, became all-consumed with the idea of female beauty. Rather than produce dramatic historical narratives (as was the fashion of the day), The Brotherhood adhered to an inflexible set of puritanical and aesthetic standards of which Rossetti soon tired. The Brotherhood challenged the 'decadent' indulgences of the day by looking for inspiration and religious guidance in medieval art. Recognized by history as an inspired but provocative nonconformist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti made his name initially as a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Complete Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Dante Gabriel Rossetti