The Pre-Raphaelites

William Morris and his comrades Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Holman Hunt, and other Victorian era artists and designers found moral purity and spiritual vigor in the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. Their aim was to restore art and design to the style and spirit extant before the High Renaissance. Raphael Sanzio (1483-1520) is the artist most exemplary of the High Renaissance and, therefore, regarded as pivotal by those artists and designers who strove to return to earlier, simpler times. They called themselves Pre-Raphaelites.

Morris was a student of Rossetti* and a collaborator with him on various enterprises. Morris and others also worked to restore old craftsmanship that had been replaced by the manufacture of shoddy, poorly designed goods.

There was also a movement to find architectural forms that were not sullied by the return to classical styles. Modern Gothic architecture became popular in Germany, England, and northern Europe. A. W. N. Pugin designed the neo-Gothic exterior of the British Houses of Parliament in 1835.

*Morris' relationship with Rossetti became strained later after Morris’ wife became romantically involved with Rossetti.