Much of Christina Rossetti’s poetry has a very depressing and rather

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Much of Christina Rossetti’s poetry has a very depressing and rather

sombre tone, which can be sometimes used to infer the way in which she

viewed life and times, which she was living in. However, despite this

sombre theme throughout her poetry it can ...

Much of Christina Rossetti’s poetry has a very depressing and rather

sombre tone, which can be sometimes used to infer the way in which she

viewed life and times, which she was living in. However, despite this

sombre theme throughout her poetry it can be argued that it was not

only her life that influenced her poetry but also the time in which

shewas living. Many historians have suggested that the era in which

Rossetti lived was a rather ‘bad’ time, the second half of the

nineteenth century was a rather strange period and the Pre-Raphaelite

Movement made quite an artistic group.

The Pre-Raphaelites, being young, talented, and having many ideas of

their own, felt stifled by the rigidity of the Royal Academy's idea of

what tasteful, beautiful art should be. The PRB held the haughty

belief that the only true great art came from before the 16th century

Italian painter, Raphael (hence the society's name). Raphael

represented high renaissance, a time when painters, instead of letting

their subjects dictate their qualities to the artist, would manipulate

the subject into their own ideal of beauty. Thus, all realism was

lost. The PRB, with full spirit, denounced this art of idealization,

and led the way to produce works based on real landscapes and real

models, and paid intense attention to accuracy of detail and color

William Holman Hunt, D.G. Rossetti, John Everett Millais, William

Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner and F.G. Stephens

founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) in 1849. In some ways it

was an impulsive venture, the PRB aimed to produce works that were

innovative in style and substance, and expressive of direct, sincere

feeling. And behind this lay the persistent ambition to be noticed

and ‘make a name’. As well as painting, they were also committed to

the literary arts, and nearly all the PRBs wrote poetry. These

painters had a specific agenda. Instead of painting the typical

still-lifes, landscapes and seascapes, they drew their subject matters

from medieval tales, bible stories, classical mythology, and nature.

Using bright colors on a white background, the artists were able to

achieve great depth and brilliance.Although some of Christina

Rossetti’s earliest versese were published in The Germ, a magazine

produced for a short time by the Pre-Raphaelites, and she sat as a

model for several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s paintings, she was not

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