Vernon Lushington Thomas Hughes, and Richard Buckley Litchfield, became a unifying force at the College. He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his college rooms. Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865. Lushington, friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor. He was a close friend of Leslie Stephen and his family; Stephen’s daughter Virginia (later Woolf) based her character
Pia de' Tolomei (Rossetti painting) Pia de' Tolomei (Rossetti painting) Pia de' Tolomei is an oil painting on canvas by English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painted around 1868 and currently housed at the Spencer Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. This work was painted at the start of Rossetti's affair with Jane Morris, who modelled for the picture. As he was to do with "Beata Beatrix" (1870), Rossetti chose a tale by Dante Aligheri (from "Purgatorio") to illustrate his love for his model. The story tells of a woman whose husband imprisoned and later poisoned her: Rossetti