D.G.Rossetti

"Proserpine" 

 "Pandora"

"The woman of the flame"

 "The Day Dream"

"Mnemosyne"

 "The Salutation of Beatrice"

 "Αrt meets Poetry"

 "Blanzifiore"

"La Pia de Tolomei" 

The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti,  12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrHOPQsHGvE&t=66s 

 He was a British poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre - Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris  and Edward Burne - Jones. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Asthetic movement.

Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence, The House of Life. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti's work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures.

Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses  Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, Fanny Cormforth and Jane Morris.


A typical work of his, "Prosperine" , accompanied with a beautiful poem.

The goddess Proserpine was doomed to spend half the year in the Underworld, because she had partaken of a pomegranate after she was abducted by Pluto. Rossetti began eight canvases with this composition, one of his most powerful. This version is the eighth and last, completed just a few days before his death.  

 
In his Proserpine, the artist illustrates in his typical Pre-Raphaelite style the Greek goddess who lives in the underworld during Winter. Although Rossetti inscribed the date 1874 on the picture, he worked for seven years on eight separate canvases before he finished with it. His Proserpine, like his model  Jane Morris, is an exquisitely beautiful woman, with delicate facial features, slender hands, and flawlessly pale skin set off by her thick raven hair. Rossetti painted it at a time when his mental health was extremely precarious and his love for Jane Morris was at its most obsessive.

Rossetti wrote about Proserpine:

"She is represented in a gloomy corridor of her palace, with the fatal fruit in her hand. As she passes, a gleam strikes on the wall behind her from some inlet suddenly opened, and admitting for a moment the sight of the upper world and she glances furtively towards it, immersed in thought. The incense-burner stands beside her as the attribute of a goddess. The ivy branch in the background may be taken as a symbol of clinging memory"

Rossetti began work on the painting in 1871 and painted at least eight separate versions, the last only completed in 1882, the year of his death

On the top right of the canvas "Proserpine" is inscribed by the artist, followed by his sonnet in Italian. The same sonnet in English is inscribed on the frame:



"Proserpine",   a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall, - one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door.
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear

Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this Tartarean gray
That chills me: and afar, how far away
The nights shall be from the days that were.

Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine

(Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring
Continually together murmuring,)
'Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!' 

List with his work 
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9A%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%BF%CE%B3%CE%BF%CF%82_%CE%AD%CF%81%CE%B3%CF%89%CE%BD_%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%85_%CE%9D%CF%84%CE%AC%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B5_%CE%93%CE%BA%CE%AC%CE%BC%CF%80%CF%81%CE%B9%CE%B5%CE%BB_%CE%A1%CE%BF%CF%83%CE%AD%CF%84%CE%B9