Sancta Lilias

Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote poetry and painted, and neither activity fully explains the other. He co-founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, arguing for a return to the directness of Italian painting before Raphael, then drifted away from the group’s early realism toward something denser and more symbolic. The late paintings are close ups of women, usually Jane Morris or Alexa Wilding, with long necks and heavy hair, surrounded by flowers and symbolic objects. They are not portraits so much as arrangements. He buried his poems with his wife Elizabeth Siddal after her death from laudanum, then had the grave opened seven years later to retrieve them for publication. Chloral and whisky wrecked his last decade. Beata Beatrix, painted after Siddal’s death, is the one picture where the biography and the work genuinely lock together.