Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Astarte Syriaca, 1877

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator, and was the brother of poet Christina Rossetti and critic William Michael Rossetti. For many years, Rossetti worked on English translations of Italian poetry, he later created a method of painting in watercolours, using thick pigments mixed with gum to give rich effects similar to medieval illuminations. He also developed a novel drawing technique in pen-and-ink.

He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and 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. Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism.

Astarte Syriaca is one of the grandest portraits of Jane Morris painted during the latter part of Rossetti's career and is a manifest of the ideal of the voluptuous, sensual woman, the muse. The work exhibits a sense of melancholy, revealing his own tragic love for Jane, the second great muse of his life.

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HC-1493: card size 7" x 5" (178mm x 127mm)