Dante Gabriel Rossetti Heaven. Around 1860, Rossetti returned to oil painting, abandoning the dense medieval compositions of the 1850s in favour of powerful close-up images of women in flat pictorial spaces characterised by dense colour. These paintings became a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In them, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He portrayed his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess. "As in Rossetti's previous reforms, the new kind of subject appeared in the context
Maria Francesca Rossetti Maria Francesca Rossetti Maria Francesca Rossetti (17 February 1827 – 24 November 1876) was an English author and nun. She was the sister of artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti as well as William Michael Rossetti and Christina Georgina Rossetti, who dedicated her 1862 poem "Goblin Market" to Maria. She was born in London. She was the author of "The Shadow of Dante: Being an essay towards studying himself, his world, and his pilgrimage." (published 1871). She also acted as a governess during the years of family hardship brought on by her father's failing health and tutored a young Lucy Madox Brown,