Editing Dante Gabriel Rossetti (section)

===A new direction===
[[File:Dante Gabriel Rossetti Bocca Baciata 1859.png|right|thumb|''[[Bocca Baciata]]'' (1859), modelled by [[Fanny Cornforth]], signalled a new direction in Rossetti's work. ([[Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]])]]
[[File:Dante Gabriel Rossetti 001.jpg|thumb|[[Albumen print]] of ''Dante Gabriel Rossetti'' by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ([[Lewis Carroll]]; 1863)]]

Around 1860, Rossetti returned to oil painting, abandoning the dense medieval compositions of the 1850s in favour of powerful close-up images of women in flat pictorial spaces characterised by dense colour. These paintings became a major influence on the development of the European [[symbolism (arts)|Symbolist]] movement.<ref name="Treuherz52">Treuherz et al. (2003), pp. 52–54.</ref> In them, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He portrayed his new lover [[Fanny Cornforth]] as the epitome of physical eroticism, while Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess. "As in Rossetti's previous reforms, the new kind of subject appeared in the context of a wholesale reconfiguration of the practice of painting, from the most basic level of materials and techniques up to the most abstract or conceptual level of the meanings and ideas that can be embodied in visual form."<ref name="Treuherz52" />  These new works were based not on medievalism, but on the Italian High [[Renaissance]] artists of [[Venice]], [[Titian]] and [[Paolo Veronese|Veronese]].<ref name="Treuherz52" /><ref name="Treuherz64">Treuherz et al. (2003), p. 64.</ref>

In 1861, Rossetti became a founding partner in the [[decorative arts]] firm, [[Morris & Co.|Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.]] with Morris, Burne-Jones, [[Ford Madox Brown]], [[Philip Webb]], [[Charles Joseph Faulkner|Charles Faulkner]] and [[Peter Paul Marshall]].<ref name="DNB" /> Rossetti contributed designs for stained glass and other decorative objects.

Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth, died of an overdose of [[laudanum]] in 1862, possibly a suicide, shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child.<ref>{{Cite web|first=Jan |last=Marsh |date=15 February 2012 |url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/did-rossetti-really-need-to-exhume-his-wife/|title=Did Rossetti really need to exhume his wife?|website=TheTLS|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120219053039/https://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article872671.ece|archive-date=19 February 2012|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tzBZAAAAIAAJ|title=Artists and Writers in Revolt: The Pre-Raphaelites|first=Audrey|last=Williamson|author-link=Audrey Williamson (critic) |year=1976|publisher=David & Charles|via=Google Books |page=46 |isbn=978-0-7153-72-623}}</ref> Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and when Elizabeth was buried at [[Highgate Cemetery]], he interred the bulk of his unpublished poems with her, though he later had them dug up. He idealised her image as [[Dante]]'s Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as ''[[Beata Beatrix]]''.<ref name="Treuherz80">Treuherz et al. (2003), p. 80.</ref>