The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had sisters, you know, and at this exhibition on the Rossettis, you don’t just get the famous poet, Christina, but works by Elizabeth Siddal who married Dante Gabriel Rossetti. So as well as the normal run of Pre-Raphaelite paintings – and if bee-stung lips, voluminous hair and languor are your thing, look no further – there’s lots of poetry on the walls.
Boy, it was a weird family. There were, in fact, four siblings, but William and Maria don’t really count. The father was a political exile from Italy. The children were precocious artists and poets, with Christina featuring in her brother’s works, most strikingly as a shrinking Virgin Mary in a novel take on the Annunciation.
