William Michael Rossetti

William Michael Rossetti (September 25, 1829 – February 5, 1919) was an English writer and critic. Image File history File links William_Michael_Rossetti. ... Image File history File links William_Michael_Rossetti. ... September 25 is the 268th day of the year (269th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1829 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... February 5 is the 36th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2005 est. ...

Born in London, he was a son of immigrant Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti, and the brother of Maria Francesca Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti. London (pronounced ) is the capital city of the United Kingdom and the largest city of England (strangely, England has no constitutional existence within the United Kingdom, and therefore cannot be said to have a capital). ... Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti (28 February 1783 - 24 April 1854) was an Italian poet and scholar who emigrated to England. ... Maria Francesca Rossetti (17 February 1827 - 24 November 1876) was an English author. ... Dante Gabriel Rossetti (May 12, 1828 - April 10, 1882) was an English poet, painter and translator. ... Christina Rossetti Christina Georgina Rossetti (December 5, 1830 – December 29, 1894) was an English poet. ...

He was one of the seven founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, and became the movement's unofficial organizer and bibliographer. He edited the Brotherhood's literary magazine The Germ which published four issues in 1850 and wrote the poetry reviews for it. Persephone, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. ... 1848 (MDCCCXLVIII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Illustration by Holman Hunt to Thomas Woolners poem My Beautiful Lady, published in The Germ, 1850 The Germ was a periodical established by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to diseminate their ideas. ... 1850 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

It was William Michael Rossetti who recorded the aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at their founding meeting in September 1848:

1. To have genuine ideas to express;
2. To study nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
3. To sympathize 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;
4. And most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

Although Rossetti worked full time as a civil servant, he maintained a prolific output of criticism and biography across a range of interests from Algernon Swinburne to James McNeill Whistler. He wrote a study of his maternal uncle John William Polidori (physician to Lord Byron), a comprehensive biography of D. G. Rossetti, and edited the collected works of D. G. Rossetti and Christina Rossetti. Algernon Swinburne, Portrait by Rossetti Algernon Charles Swinburne (April 5, 1837 – April 10, 1909) was a Victorian era English poet. ... Self portrait James Abbott McNeill Whistler (July 14, 1834 – July 17, 1903) was an American-born, British-based painter and etcher. ... John William Polidori (September 7, 1795 - August 24, 1821) is credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. ... Lord Byron, English poet Lord Byron (1803), as painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, (January 22, 1788 – April 19, 1824) was the most widely read English language poet of his day. ...

In 1874 he married Lucy Madox Brown, daughter of the painter Ford Madox Brown. The Last of England, 1855 Ford Madox Brown (April 16, 1821 - October 6, 1893) was an English painter of moral and historical subjects, notable for his distinctively graphic and often Hogarthian version of the Pre-Raphaelite style. ...

William Michael Rosetti was a major contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica. Below is a quotation from his article on Fra Angelico demonstrating his literary and art historical style. 1913 advertisement for the 11th edition, with the slogan When in doubt — look it up in the Encyclopædia Britannica The Encyclopædia Britannica (properly spelled with æ, the ae-ligature) was first published in 1768–1771 as The Britannica was an important early English-language general encyclopedia and is still... The Blessed Fra Angelico, (c. ...

"The "pietistic" quality of Fra Angelico's work is in fact its predominant characteristic. The faces of his figures have an air of rapt suavity, devotional fervency and beaming esoteric consciousness, which is intensely attractive to some minds ...... the faces becoming sleek and prim, with a smirk of sexless religiosity which hardly eludes the artificial or even the hypocritical; because of this, there are some who are not moved by his work. Even so, Fra Angelico is a notable artist within his sphere,......." ^[1]

References

1. ^ Rossetti, William Michael. Angelico, Fra. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

Further information

• Angela Thirlwell. 'William and Lucy: The Other Rossettis'. Yale; ISBN 0-300-10200-3
• Julie L'Enfant. 'William Rossetti's Art Criticism: The Search for Truth in Victorian Art'. University Press of America; ISBN 0-7618-1290-3

External links

• Works by William Michael Rossetti at Project Gutenberg