DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61290#0025
DANTE ROSSETTI AND THE
PRE-RAPHAELITE
MOVEMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREPARATION FOR REFORM IN ART.
Constable prophesies the Decay of English Art—The new
Impulse from Italy—The English Renaissance of 1850—
Rossetti and the Specialistic Temperament—Classicism
of the Eighteenth Century—Influence of the French
Revolution—Revival of Romance—Distinction between
Mediaeval and Modern Romance—Pessimism in Pre-
Raphaelite Painting-—-Nature as a Background—Moral
Significance of the Change.
A STUDY of the Pre-Raphaelite movement
in England at the zenith of the nineteenth
century opens up perhaps a wider field for
controversy in the ethics of art than is afforded by
any other phase of modern painting. Between the
ridicule which, for the most part, greeted Rossetti’s
first picture, “ The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” in
1849, and the enthusiastic homage which exalted
B
PRE-RAPHAELITE
MOVEMENT.
CHAPTER I.
THE PREPARATION FOR REFORM IN ART.
Constable prophesies the Decay of English Art—The new
Impulse from Italy—The English Renaissance of 1850—
Rossetti and the Specialistic Temperament—Classicism
of the Eighteenth Century—Influence of the French
Revolution—Revival of Romance—Distinction between
Mediaeval and Modern Romance—Pessimism in Pre-
Raphaelite Painting-—-Nature as a Background—Moral
Significance of the Change.
A STUDY of the Pre-Raphaelite movement
in England at the zenith of the nineteenth
century opens up perhaps a wider field for
controversy in the ethics of art than is afforded by
any other phase of modern painting. Between the
ridicule which, for the most part, greeted Rossetti’s
first picture, “ The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” in
1849, and the enthusiastic homage which exalted
B