It’s obvious, from the very first room of Tate Britain’s overblown, baffling celebration of the “radical” and “revolutionary” pre-Raphaelites, who was the real talent in the Rossetti family: the poet Christina Rossetti. You can hear readings of her poems here, including Colour, which praises colours in almost childlike, spiritually clear images: “What is yellow? pears are yellow, / Rich and ripe and mellow.”
Unfortunately as you listen, you are obliged to look at her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 1849-50 painting The Annunciation, displayed like the icon it isn’t in the middle of the space. Where Christina’s images have a crystalline exactitude that makes them pretty much timeless, this work is strictly for buffs of Victoriana. It is like some sort of taxidermy exhibit, a leaden quotation of medieval art that’s neither properly medieval, nor bitingly modern.
