“I’VE BEEN MAD ABOUT PRE-RAPHAELITES since I was a schoolgirl, and one of the things I really love about them is the way they turn the viewer into a detective.” Dr Carol Jacobi is in the final stages of preparation for The Rossettis – a forthcoming show she has curated at Tate Britain – and is naturally a veritable font of knowledge about a family who embodied romance and radicalism of what is often referred to as the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
“The paintings are just so full – exploring not just what you see on the outside but what [the subjects] are thinking, too,” she says. “I think they’d have made brilliant filmmakers today.”
Certainly the Rossetti siblings – Maria, Dante Gabriel, William Michael and Christina – an Anglo-Italian clan born just before Victoria
