Rossetti eventually desired to quit art and follow his lifelong passion of becoming a poet in the mold of his idols, Dante (his namesake), Byron, and Keats. However, this dream was not to be since he failed to live up to the expectations of others and became instead a successful artist who painted some of the most beautiful women you could imagine.
He began his career as an artist at a time when painting portraits were in high demand so he traveled around Italy selling sketches of famous people for money to support himself and his family. Although this job allowed him to see many new things and meet great artists, it also meant that he never settled down for very long because whenever he finished a portrait, it would have to be shipped off to someone else so he could get paid. This never stopped him from painting though because he believed that beauty was beauty no matter who is looking at it.
In 1856, after five years of this lifestyle, Mario decided to settle down and rent an apartment in Florence where he could paint full-time. He soon found work as a professor of anatomy at the university and was given free rein by the school to come up with his own teaching methods which they really liked since they got to watch his students improve over time.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (11 May 1828–9 April 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter, and translator who was a member of the Rossetti family. With William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, he created the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. Rossetti is best known for his paintings and poems about the medieval Italian poet Dante.
He was born in London to Mary Ann "Mauger" Rossetti, a Scottish dressmaker, and William Rossetti, a printer and publisher from North Yorkshire who had migrated to London to work as an apprentice for Thomas Cundy, one of the founders of The Times newspaper. His father died when he was only nine years old, and his mother soon after married another man. Left alone with her parents' servants until she could support herself, Mary Ann often spent hours sitting with her son at home while he waited for her to return from work. He learned to read and write early, and enjoyed drawing from an early age.
After his father's death, Rossetti went to live with his uncle, Christopher Rossetti, and his wife, Elizabeth Barrow. Here he became friends with other young artists such as Edward Burne-Jones and Henry James Poynter, and began to exhibit his drawings in public for the first time. In 1847, he contributed illustrations to two books by Lord Byron: Poems and Songs.
Rossetti's childhood was exceptionally happy, characterized by affectionate parental care and the creative companionship of older siblings. In temperament, she was most like her brother Dante Gabriel; their father called the pair the "two storms" of the family in comparison to the "two calms," Maria and William. Christina showed an early interest in poetry and music, and at the age of seven was taught the piano by her mother. She also learned to sing from her sister Elizabeth, who had a beautiful voice.
Maria Anna Cicerelli di Belfiore was born on April 2, 1822, in London, where her parents were living as diplomatic representatives of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Her father, Domenico Giuseppe Cicello, was a descendant of Italian nobility, while her mother, Amalia Manzoli, was a well-off widow with an estate near Palermo worth about $80,000 in today's money. The couple had three other children: Elizabeth, William, and Dante Gabriel.
When Maria was nine years old, her father was appointed ambassador to England, and the family moved there. Four years later, when Maria was 13, her father was made governor of Sicily, and they returned there. This period is important for the development of Maria's mind and personality. She met leading artists and writers, including Lord Byron and John Keats, and became friends with them.
Giacometti enrolled in the Evangelical School in Schiers in 1915, where he continued to paint in a tiny private studio. Later, he enrolled in Geneva's Ecole des Arts Industriels, where he studied painting, drawing, and sculpture under Pointillist painter David Estoppey and sculptor Maurice Sarkissoff.
During this time, he also attended classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, where he learned techniques from realists such as Jean-Paul Laurens and Pierre Le Bas.
In 1919, Giacometti returned to Switzerland and began teaching drawing and anatomy at the Schiers school. He also took on some administrative duties there. In 1920, he became an assistant professor at the Académie de Lausanne and continued to teach there until 1925. That same year, he was appointed chair of sculpture at the Beaux-Arts Institute in Brussels.
In 1926, he returned to Switzerland and assumed a professorship at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich. The following year, he married Jeanne Hirschhorn. They had two children: a daughter named Aline and a son named Claude.
In 1930, Giacometti moved to a larger apartment on Schellingstrasse in Zurich so that he could continue his work as a sculptor. That same year, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Sculpture at the International Exhibition in Bologna.
In 1848, one of the Pre-Raphaelite brothers, James Collinson, proposed to Rossetti. She declined the offer, citing Collinson's recent convert to Roman Catholicism. However, this was probably a pretext; she may have been reluctant to leave her father's business in London for life in rural Italy.
There is some evidence that she may have been involved with another man at the time, William Bell Scott. They seem to have met while she was living in Italy and he was training to be an artist in London. Although they apparently saw each other again in later years, there is no evidence that they were ever more than friends.
Rossetti himself had many proposals of marriage, mostly from wealthy women wishing to "marry up" into fame and success. He always refused them all. Even when he was old and sickly, refused to accept any help from his family, and lived frugally in order to support himself and keep working, he still couldn't afford to marry. At one point he even took out ads in newspapers offering himself as a husband material!
Eventually his friend and mentor, John Everett Millais, persuaded him to accept a proposal from Mary Robinson. They married on May 16, 1872, only a few months before Rossetti died.
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