| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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rules, especially those found in nature. Stephen Fliegal, a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, summarized well:
Later, in the 1860s, Rossetti influenced many other Victorian poets and artists, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, and he was lauded by them. According to Penelope Fitzgerald, Burne-Jones reported, “and so I saw him for the first time, his face satisfying all my worship” (45).
Portrayal Three places the focus on Rossetti as lover, seducer, husband, and oppressor, and Portrayal Four extends the negative dimensions of these roles to indict him as a murderer. By definition, these portrayals show him in relation to women; and, in fact, it is almost impossible to discuss Rossetti without attention to the three women he loved, all of whom had an influence on his painting and poetry: Lizzie, his wife; Fanny Cornforth; and Jane Morris. They are all in some way related to representations of Rossetti. Lizzie is probably more famous in death than in life because of the exhumation of her body to retrieve Rossetti’s original manuscript of his poems (Marsh, Dante Gabriel Rossetti 244). In fact, during her life she was a powerful influence on him. She was of a lower social station than Rossetti and was discovered, tradition has it, by Rossetti’s friend Walter Deverell, working in a millinery shop owned by Mrs. Mary Tozer. This meeting, a favorite scene of novelists who portray Rossetti through the circumstances and characters involved, often