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
The Beloved (Rossetti painting) The Beloved (Rossetti painting) The Beloved (also The Bride) is an oil painting on canvas by English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, first painted in 1865 and currently housed at Tate Britain. This painting illustrates the Song of Solomon. Two passages from the Song of Solomon are inscribed on the picture's gilded frame: "My beloved is mine and I am his" (2:16)and"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine" (1:2) The bride, caught in the action of moving back her veil, is attended by four virginal bridesmaids and an African page boy.