Giotto Painting Dante's Portrait

Giotto Painting Dante's Portrait (1852) at the Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection is a watercolor that encapsulates the founding myth of Pre-Raphaelitism itself: the moment when medieval Italian painting and medieval Italian poetry met in the persons of Giotto and Dante. Rossetti's deep identification with both figures made this a personally resonant subject — he was simultaneously claiming artistic descent from Giotto and literary kinship with Dante. The image imagines a meeting entirely plausible given the two men's overlapping lives in Florence. For Rossetti and his circle, Giotto represented the originary moment of European painting before its subsequent corruption by academic convention — the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's very name invoked the art before Raphael, and Giotto was the supreme exemplar of that purity. The watercolor medium suits the intimate, studious quality of this act of artistic commemoration within commemoration.

The medieval interior setting — chapel or palace — provides an opportunity for decorative detail in the architectural and furnishing elements. Figures in period dress must convey the historical specificity that Pre-Raphaelitism demanded while remaining expressive in pose and face.