[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Painters —> The PRB and later Pre-Raphaelitism —> Dante Gabriel Rossetti —> NextM]]
Portrait of Gabriele Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
28 April 1853
Pencil on paper
10 5/8 x 8 1/8 in.
Private collection
Source: Rossetti, facing p. 20.
Rossetti's father Gabriele Pasquale Guiseppe Rossetti died just over a year after this portrait was drawn. Commentary continues below. [Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]
Source: Rossetti, facing p. 20.
Michael Rossetti includes two accounts of his father in his memoir of his brother. Both are by fellow artists. One is by William Bell Scott, from his Autobiographical Notes (1892). Scott says that when he visited the Rossetti family home in Charlotte Street, London, he "found an old gentleman sitting by the fire in a great chair, the table drawn close to his chair, with a thick manuscript book open before him, and the largest snuff-box I ever saw beside it conveniently open. He had a black cap on his head furnished with a great peak or shade for the eyes, so that I saw his face only partially.... The old gentleman's pronunciation of English was very Italian..." (19). This was just a brief meeting, but the other account, quoted from Frederic George Stephens's monograph on Rossetti in 1894, adds more detail to what was clearly a characteristic pose:
I could not but be struck with the noble energy of his face, and by the high culture his expression attested, while a sort of eager, almost passionate resolution seemed to glow in all he said and did. To a youngster, such as I was then, he seemed much older than his years; and, while seated reading at a table with two candles behind him, and (because his sight was failing) with a wide shade over his eyes, he looked a very Rembrandt come to life. The light was reflected from a manuscript placed close to his face, and, in the shadow which covered them, made distinct all the fineness and vigour of his sharply moulded features. It was half lost upon his somewhat shrunken figure wrapped in a student's dressing-gown, and shone fully upon the lean, bony, and delicate hands in which he held the paper. He looked like an old and somewhat imperative prophet, and his voice had a slightly rigorous ring, speaking to his sons and their visitors. [19-20]
Michael Rossetti's own comment here serves to soften the picture: "I am not sure that the word 'rigorous' would here convey quite the right impression," he adds. "My father's address in such cases was clear and emphatic, and as if no dissent were expected to ensue; but it was not marked by anything hard or brusque." Still, he continues, "Good-natured and indulgent though he in fact was, and animated with the most resolute desire to do his very best for the present and future of his children, our love nevertheless was chiefly concentrated upon our mother — and never did mother deserve it better" (20). Lost in his studies, professorial in manner, the Rossettis' father sounds like a rather typical Victorian paterfamilias, but there is an eagerness in his face, and a certain pathos in his stooped figure, that suggests the portrait-taker's full understanding of, and sympathy with, his subject.
Image scan and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. You may use the image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned it and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.
"Gabriele Rossetti." Rossetti Archive Web. 25 April 2022.
Rossetti, Michael. Memoir. In Dante Gabriel Rossetti, His Family Letters, Vol. I. Boston: Roberts Bros, 1895. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill. Web. 25 April 2022.
Created 8 February 2022