2023-02-01
Most art lovers associate the Pre-Raphaelites with paintings featuring beautiful, red-haired women. This association is as correct as possible, however, what more should one know about the brotherhood? Certainly, the fact that they promoted an artistic practice that they considered characteristic of Italian art, created before Raphael. We will provide more information in the article below.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed in the house of John Millais' parents in Gower Street, London, in 1848. The association was joined by painters who were fed up with academic painting and decided to create a new quality in the art based on models drawn from the early Renaissance, favouring the subject of medieval tales and legends. The main representatives of the brotherhood, apart from Millais, included: William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites were Ford Madox Brown and the poet Christina Georgina Rossetti, sister of Dante Gabriel. The association's work was initially rejected by the Royal Academy of Arts, a situation changed by the art critic John Ruskin, who wrote two letters for The Times magazine praising the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1853 the brotherhood disbanded, with only William Holman Hunt remaining true to the association's enshrined ideals.
The Pre-Raphaelites looked to painters such as Giotto and Fra Angelico as models, and in their spare time studied their works meticulously. They also looked to the Bible, Arthurian legends, fairy tales, Shakespeare's dramas and the poems of John Keats and Alfred Tennyson for inspiration. Images such as: "Ophelia" by John Everett Millais and "Proserpine" by Rossetti are known by art lovers.
It is widely believed that, on the one hand, the Pre-Raphaelites were the inspiration for the French landscape painters of the Barbizon School, and that the multitude of allusions and symbols paved the way for English Art Nouveau. In 2007, the BBC broadcast a six-episode miniseries about the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, it was titled: "Desperate Romantics''.