**PRERAFFAELLITI and PRERAFFAELLISMO.** – These are the terms used to designate the followers of a particular aesthetic doctrine and the doctrine itself, which emerged in England around the mid-19th century.
It was indeed at that time that a group of young English artists sought to unite in opposition to the conventions still prevalent in academic and official painting. These young artists proposed a return to plastic and decorative pictorial forms exemplified by models from before Raphael. As can be seen, this was a theory that arrived somewhat belatedly compared to those already established among the Nazarenes (v.), Purism (v.), INGRES, JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE (v.), and his followers. Above all, however, they drew their inspiration from Ingres and the purity of his drawing. As always happens in such circumstances, the Pre-Raphaelite theory meant something only when it served to define the stylistic terms of authentic works of art; in other cases, it amounted to little or nothing.
The group of Pre-Raphaelites, to which the members gave the name of *fraternity*, initially included Dante Gabriele Rossetti (1828–82), Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais (painters), and Thomas Woolner (sculptor), who were the first to champion the principles of its theories. Later, James Collinson joined them, while Frederick N. Brown also came into contact with them. Burne-Jones, a follower of Rossetti, and many other English painters of the mid-century are also considered Pre-Raphaelites, though they never actually belonged to the *fraternity*, which was soon dissolved. Rossetti was undoubtedly the leading figure of the group and, in a sense, the only one who remained faithful to its initial theories, making no concessions to realism in his efforts to express the mystery of the human soul through historical or biblical subjects derived from poetry and legend.
THE PRERAFFAELLISMO IN LITERATURE. – The Pre-Raphaelite movement was to influence English sensibility and taste even beyond the realm of the visual arts, and it is characteristic that the literary tendencies of the Pre-Raphaelites in painting correspond to pictorial and illustrative tendencies in their poetry (as seen in both Rossetti and Morris, who were both artists and poets).
The Pre-Raphaelite movement united for only a brief time individuals too diverse to represent it, and the journal they founded, *The Germ*, had a short-lived existence. Even the mythical foundation of their art became clouded by sensuality to the point that they became associated with the pagan and *satanic* Swinburne, and in 1871 they were violently attacked by a critic under the label of *The fleshy school of poetry*. Having started from the defense of an ethical and socially inspired art rooted in the Middle Ages—supported and defended by Ruskin in opposition to the industrialism of the age—they ultimately abandoned their theoretical premises, instead fostering a kind of mysticism of art for art’s sake. The symbolism of their works reduced to a mystic aestheticism or a mannered exoticism, incorporating currents and demands that clashed with the ethical and religious foundations that had originally inspired them. Unlike French Impressionism, Pre-Raphaelitism did not have a significant resonance in continental Europe.