L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 23, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 24 L'Italo-Americano M uch has been written about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and its three found- ing members, painter and poet, D ante G abriel Ros s etti, and painters William Hunt and John Millais. These writings are sup- ported by an abundance of schol- arly research, books, films and museum exhibits. San Francis- co's Legion of Honor is one such museum with an ongoing exhibit through S eptember 30 titled Truth and Beauty: The P re- Raphaelites and the Old Masters, w ith w orks by a number of Brotherhood artists including Rossetti. While the Museum's exhibit includes paintings , stained glass and tapestries by many of the Pre-Raphaelites, this piece will highlight the life and works of Rossetti, a London- born Italian. Born Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti in 1828, he grew to become an illustrator, painter and translator. A member of the Ros- setti family, he was the son of Italian expatriate Gabriele Ros- setti, a Dante scholar who had moved to London after being exiled from Naples for writing poetry in support of the Neapoli- tan Constitution. His mother was a governess who strictly super- vised her children's education. They were an unusually gifted family in Victorian England including sister and poet Christi- na, sister and author Maria Francesca, and brother and art critic William Michael. From a young age, Rossetti was determined to be a painter. As a child, he passed his time reading Shakespeare, Goethe, Dickens and Lord Byron, divid- ing his time as an adult between painting and poetry. It is said that Rossetti's art was characterized by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism and that his early poetry was influenced by John Keats. While the Brotherhood began with only three members, other artists joined the group including Rossetti's brother, William Michael, which eventually brought the Brotherhood's mem- bership to seven. And although the Brotherhood only lasted about five years, Rossetti and his fellows had a lasting influence on the world of art. It was Rossetti's brother, William Michael, who recorded CATHERINE ACCARDI of the nineteenth century in Great Britain." Whistler's famous comment was "he was a king." The archive includes Ros- setti materials available in chronological and alphabetical indices under headings including paintings, poems, books and cor- respondence. The Legion of Honor Muse- um describes the exhibit, which runs through September 30, as the first major international exhi- bition to assemble works by the nineteenth-century Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood with the Medieval and Renaissance mas- terpieces that inspired them. The exhibit demonstrates the Pre- Raphaelites' fascination with Italian masters, including Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Fra Angelico and Pietro Perugino. The Legion of Honor is located in Lincoln Park at 100 34th Avenue in San Fran- cisco. The exhibit website is available at https:// legionofhonor.famsf.org/exhibi- t i o n s / t r u t h - a n d - b e a u t y - p r e - raphaelites-and-old-masters. the goals of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at their founding meeting in September 1848 with four doctrines: 1) to have gen- uine ideas to express, 2) to study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them, 3) to sym- pathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote, and 4) to produce thoroughly good pic- tures and statues. The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what it considered the mechanistic approach first adopted by Man- nerist artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo. Its members believed the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael had been a corrupting influence on the academic teach- ing of art, hence the name "Pre- Raphaelite." The Brotherhood sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colors and com- plex compositions of Quattro- cento Italian art. Although their art is now viewed as exemplary work, it did not go unquestioned in its day. Harsh criticism came from many who claimed their work disre- garded academic ideals of beauty and irreverence and treated reli- gious themes with too much real- ism. Some members of the Brotherhood actually exhibited their first works anonymously, signing their paintings with the monogram PRB, which of course stood for "Pre-Raphaelite Broth- erhood." Although the Brotherhood was short-lived, by 1854 mem- bers of the group had split, going their separate ways to pursue their form of art, they did so in such a way that their doctrines are considered significant to this day and meriting of major muse- um exhibits, books, films and even a TV series. In film, Rossetti was played by Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's television film Dante's Inferno (1967). The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood has been the subject of two BBC period dramas. The first, The Love School, (1975) features Ben Kingsley as Rosset- ti. The second was Desperate Romantics, in which Rossetti is played by Aidan Turner. Rossetti died in 1882 at the country house of a friend where he had gone in hopes of improv- ing his failing health and is buried at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England. So important was this Italian's influence on Eng- land and art that a plaque has been placed at the site of his English home at 16 Cheyne Walk in London. The inscription reads: "Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882 poet and painter born here." One of the internet websites that offers a comprehensive look at the life and work of Rossetti is The Rossetti Archive at http://www.rossettiarchive.org. According to the website, it "facilitates the scholarly study of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter, designer, writer, and translator who was, according to both John Ruskin and Walter Pater, the most important and original artistic force in the second half Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Childhood of Mary Virgin, 1848 SAN FRANCISCO ITALIAN COMMUNITY The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at San Francisco's Legion of Honor Museum

• Cover