Vrouwenkop

1848

Meets Holman Hunt and Millais

In 1848, at the Royal Academy exhibition, Rossetti met William Holman Hunt, who helped him, still insufficiently versed in painting, to finish “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin”; Hunt introduced him to John Everett Millais.

1848

Founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

In 1848 Rossetti, with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, aiming to reform English art: to reject the “mechanistic” approach adopted after Raphael and Michelangelo and the formal training introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and to return to the abundant detail, intense colours and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art. They used pure colours on a white ground and often painted outdoors for maximum authenticity.

1850

Meets Elizabeth Siddal

In 1850 Rossetti met the poet Elizabeth Siddal, who became the favourite model of the Pre-Raphaelite painters; over the next decade she was his muse, pupil and passion. She was already ill with tuberculosis, and Rossetti made many sketches of her, some of which later served as studies for paintings.

11 February 1862

Death of Elizabeth Siddal and his manuscripts in her grave

On 11 February 1862, two years after the wedding, Elizabeth Siddal died of an overdose of laudanum, the alcoholic tincture of opium; Rossetti sank ever deeper into depression and, when she was buried at Highgate Cemetery, interred the bulk of his unpublished poems with her, though he later had them dug up.

1871

Love for Jane Morris

In 1871 Rossetti fell in love again — with Jane, the wife of his friend William Morris; they became lovers, and Jane sat for him often.

9 aprile 1882

Died