Christina Rossettie Biography :: essays research papers

Christina Rossetti was born in London on December 5, 1830 . She had two brothers and one sister, Dante Gabriel Rossetti , William Michael Rossetti and Maria Francesca Rossetti. Their father, Gabriele Rossetti, was an Italian poet and a political asylum seeker from Naples, and their mother, Frances Polidori, was the sister of Lord Byron's friend and physician, John William Polidori. Rosetti was home schooled by her mother because in the 1840's her family was stricken with severe financial difficulties due to the deterioration of her father's physical and mental health. When she was 14, Rossetti suffered a sever nervous breakdown, which in the following years was followed by sever bouts of depression and closely related illnesses. It was during this period of Rossetti's life that she, along with her mother and sister, became seriously invested in the Anglo-Catholic movement that was part of the Church of England. This religious devotion played a major role in Rossetti's personal life for the rest of her life. In her late teens she became engaged to a painter James Collinson, but there commitment eventually ended because of religious differences that they had. James Collinson reverted back to Catholicism. Some time after that Christina Rosseti became involved with the linguist by the unfamiliar name of Charles Cayley, but she did not marry him either because of, once more religious issues. For some time it was believed that Christina Rossetti was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, However Christina Rossetti was never a member of the group known as the Pre-Raphaelites.She was only connected to this group because her father and her brothers were members of the group. Although she was not a member she was a crucial member of the inner circle. In fact her brothers, Dante Gabriele Rossetti and her other brother William Michael Rossetti were original founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother hood back in 1849, along with a few other original founders by the names of , William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), John Everett Millais (1829-1896), James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and F. G. Stephens, in order to revitalize the arts. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848. The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they â€Å"considered to be the mechanistic approach adopted by the Mannerist artists who followed Raphael and Michelangelo†. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on academic teaching of art.