Rossetti in Vasto

I have just received information from the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood blog about a wonderful new exhibition of Rossetti's work in Vasto, Italy, along with that of his sister the great poet Christina Rossetti. If you click on the title it will take you to a piece at The Times Online about this exhibition. Dante Gabriel Rossetti never visited Italy during his lifetime but now at last his work has traveled back to the town where his father Gabriele Rossetti, was born. Gabriele Rossetti was a Professor of Italian at King's College London but studied poetry and painting in Naples and passed his love of the arts onto his children. Like the parents of so many geniuses he sowed the seed which blossomed into talent far surpassing anything he would have been able to create.

Rossetti's Beata Beatrix painting of Lizzie Siddal dominates the exhibition at Vasto. In Possessed we re-create the scene where Rossetti sits sketching the face of his dead wife Lizzie, just after her suicide. It is a shocking scene but one we felt was important, in order to understand that this was the only way he could try and attempt to cope with the death of his wife, after a marriage where he had found it difficult to show her his love.