English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.  Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | Rosa Triplex | Arthur-s Tomb | Monna Vanna | Regina Cordium (mk28) | The Gate Memory |
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Nicholas Hilliard
1547-1619 British Nicholas Hilliard Galleries Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547?CJanuary 7, 1619) was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about ten inches tall, and at least the two famous half-length panel portraits of Elizabeth. He enjoyed continuing success as an artist, and continuing financial troubles, for forty-five years, and his paintings still exemplify the visual image of Elizabethan England, very different from that of most of Europe in the late sixteenth century. Technically he was very conservative by European standards, but his paintings are superbly executed and have a freshness and charm that has ensured his continuing reputation as "the central artistic figure of the Elizabethan age, the only English painter whose work reflects, in its delicate microcosm, the world of Shakespeare's earlier plays.
Michelino da Besozzo
Italian Early Renaissance Painter, active 1388-1450
Cosimo Tura
1430-95 Italian Cosimo Tura Galleries Cosimo Tura (c. 1430 ?C 1495), also known as Il Cosm?? or Cosme Tura, was an Italian early-Renaissance (or Quattrocento) painter and considered one of the founders of the School of Ferrara. Born in Ferrara, he was a student of Francesco Squarcione of Padua. Later he obtained patronage from both Dukes Borso and Ercole I d'Este. By 1460, he was stipended by the Ferrarese Court. His pupils include Francesco del Cossa and Francesco Bianchi. He appears influenced by Mantegna's and Piero della Francesca's quattrocento styles. In Ferrara, he is well represented by frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia (1469?C71) . This pleasure palace, with facade and architecture of little note, belonged to the d'Este family and is located just outside the medieval town walls. Cosimo, along with Francesco del Cossa, helped produce an intricately conceived allegorical series about the months of the year and zodiac symbols. The series contains contemporary portraits of musicians, laborers, and carnival floats in idyllic parades. As in Piero della Francesca's world, the unemotive figures mill in classical serenity. He also painted the organ doors for the Duomo showing the Annunciation (1469). He collaborated in the painting of a series of "muses" for a studiolo of Leonello d'Este, including the allegorical figure of Calliope at the National Gallery (see image). While the individual attributions are often debated, among the artists thought to complete the Angelo di Pietro da Sienna, also called Maccagino or Angelo Parrasio, and Michele Pannonio.