The influence of Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy on the Pre-Raphaelites – and especially Rossetti – is such an obvious one that it is almost taken for granted in related scholarship. As subject matter these works are omnipresent, and the comingling of Dante’s romantic themes with artistic biographies is a compelling if problematic path that most Pre-Raphaelite scholars have tread at one time or another. This paper uses this familiar ground as a way to think about larger issues in narrative and symbolic representation in Pre-Raphaelite work, and the particular approach to ‘reading’ and reinterpretation the group had. With focuses on depictions of Beatrice and the tale of Paolo and Francesca da Rimini, it first briefly explores representational roots in Romantic art; then looks closely at the ways in which Rossetti in particular interpreted the original text into his own art and poetry, and how subsequent artists, such as Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, again re-interpreted Rossetti’s responses to these themes. What is revealed is the radical way in which these artists appropriated this Renaissance subject matter to render words and images that expressed their artistic agenda, at the same time that it intimated the interwoven intricacies of their personal romantic triumphs and tragedies.

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