Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

The poet, painter, and designer Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the son of the exiled Italian patriot and scholar Gabriele Rossetti. His sister was the poet, Christina Rossetti.

Dante showed literary talent early, but it was as a student at the Royal Academy Antique School that he met William Holman Hunt and John Millais, with whom he launched the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.
Rossetti's first Pre-Raphaelite paintings in oils, based on religious themes, met with much criticism and he stopped public exhibitions and turned to watercolours, which could be sold privately.

He married Elizabeth Siddal in 1860, who became the subject of much of his work.

Toward the end of his life, Rossetti sank into a morbid state induced in a large part by savage critical attacks on his poetry. He spent his last years as an invalid recluse.