ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL

1828-82), Eng. painter and poet; bd. patriot; who had settled in England and become prof. of Ital. at King’s College, London; ed. privately, King’s College School, Cary’s Art Academy, and finally at Royal Academy Antique School. His artistic and poetic careers were, to a great extent, contemporaneous. Both gifts were displayed early, and under the teaching of Ford Madox Brown he soon became familiar with the technicalities of painting; his first exhibited icture was The Girlhood of Mary, arg in, 1849; This was followed by The Laboratory, 2 lurid visualization of Robert Browning’s poem, magnificent in color and striking in design, and Ecce Ancilla Domini, a beautiful conception of the Annunciation. The critics could not understand the Pre - Raphae lite Brotherhood, an artistic fraternity founded by R. and including Holman Hunt and Mill a is. It stood for lofty ideals, expre ed in appropriate design and coloration. A series of hurian scenes was published in 1857. osa Triplex, Dante's Dream, Veronica Veronese, are other well-known pictures by R.,. while his designs for stained-gla windows did much to revive interest in that branch of art. a writer, R. was e entially romantic and mystic. His earliest published poems appeared in the Germ, 1850, and the Ozford and Cambridge Magazine; the Poems were printed in 1870, Ballads and Sonnets in 1881. His scope ranges from the ethereal dreamfne of the Ble ed Damozel to the despairing cry of The Wood spurge.