ROSSETTI, DANTIE. GABRIELE, son of Gabrielle, distinguished as a thoughtful and powerful painter, a graceful poet, and an elegant translator of early Italian poetry, was born in London in 1828, and educated at King's college, London. As a painter, lie is more talked of than known, probably because his works are transferred into private collections as soon as they leave his studio, and without undergoing the publicity of exhibition. Although he has never exhibited at the "Royal academy," his pictures are occasionally sent by their proprietors to various public picture-galleries. Of these, his " Fair Rosa mond," a picture pervaded by earnest thought. and treated in a powerful, though strik ingly unconventional manner,was exhibited in the galleries of the Royal Scottish academy in 1860-61. and may be taken as at good example of the artist's manner. Of his other pictures, the chief am " Ecee Ancilla Domini," and "Beatrice Dead." He contributed some tine drawings to an illustrated edition of Tennyson, which, although inadequately engraved, rank among the first of modern wood-cuts. These, like everything this artist has produced, are strongly imbued with the spirit of the romantic period. Rossetti's name was first brought prominently forward by his association with Millais and Hohnan Hunt in the " preraphaelite brotherhood." In 1850 lie was editor of The Germ, a maga zine of poetry and art devoted to the furtherance of the views of the "brethren," and to the inculcation of 'their fundamental principle, which was direct study from nature her self, unfettered by the conventionalities of the "antique" and "academies." While time
and experience have modified the practice of some of the ofiginal preraphaclites, Ros setti's pictures still display the peculiarities of earlierdays. As an author, Rossetti is well known by his Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri (1100-1200 1300) (Loud. Smith, Elder & Co., 1801). In this work the translator achieves the rare success of not only catching the spirit of Dante, but of rendering the great poet in his Own meters, and with a marvelous fidelity of thought and phrase. In conjunction with his brother WILLIAM, he edited Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, Pictor I,qnotus (Loud. 1853), left incomplete at the death of the compiler. Poems (1870) added to Rossetti's reputation.
Rossetti is not only a painter and author, but a man of thorough acquaintance with and high accomplishment in applied and decorative art. He has borne a distinguished part in the resuscitation of Gothic art in England, both ecclesiastical and domestic.— clIRISTINA ROSSETTI, Sister of the above, and born 1830, has earned considerable liter ary reputation from her Goblin Market and other Poems (1802), The Prince's Progress (1836); Speaking Likenesses (1874), etc.—WILLIAM RossErri has earned a name as an accom plished critical writer from his Criticism, on the and Ballads of Swinburne (1863), ele.—Another sister, MARIA (born 1827, died 1876), was known as the author of an able -study of Dante.