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 Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed.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 :. | A Vision of Fiammetta | Fair Rosamund | Jane Morris | Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice | Portrait of Maria Leathart (mk28) |
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Mehoffer, Jozef
Polish, 1869-1946 was a Polish painter and decorative artist, one of the leading artists of the Young Poland movement and one of the most revered Polish artists of his time. Mehoffer studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakew under Władysław Łuszczkiewicz, and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna as well as in Paris at the Academie Colarossi among others. There Mehoffer began painting portraits often of people of historical significance. He later expanded his work to include different techniques, such as graphic art, stained glass, textiles, chalk drawings, etchings and book illustrations. He produced set designs for theatre and stylized furniture designs. Mehoffer received international acclaim for his stained glass windows in the Gothic St Nicholas Collegiate Church in Fribourg, Switzerland produced in 1895-1936. His other stained glass designs include the Radziwill Chapel in Balice (1892), Grauer Chapel in Opava (1901), church in Jutrosini (1902), Holy Cross Chapel at Wawel (1904), sepulchral chapel in Goluchoew (1906), Orgelmeister Chapel in Vienna (1910), cathedral in Wloclawek (1935-40), cathedral in Przemysl (1940) and church in Debniki near Krakow (1943).There are stained glass designed by Mehoffer in Jesus Holliest Heart in Turek (East Greater Poland - central Poland) in the same church there are also mural paintings made by Mehoffer. Mehoffer explored various media further throughout his career to include a range of applied arts in his projects. He manufactured a multiplicity of book covers, ornaments and posters.
Charles Farrer
1839-1891 English
Maerten Jacobsz van Heemskerck
1498-1574 Flemish Maerten Jacobsz van Heemskerck Gallery