ABSTRACT
Much has been written on the foreign influences on British art and especially on the fascination of British and Pre-Raphaelite artists with Italy. However, less is known about the reception of British art abroad and its impact on the art and aesthetics of other countries. The links between Pre-Raphaelite and Continental art, and the influence of Pre-Raphaelitism on the wider European context have not been widely recognized. 1 The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the later movement that stemmed from it, which we label as Pre-Raphaelitism, have been viewed as an isolated English phenomenon, instead of part of the tradition of European nineteenth-century art. A recent exhibition at the London Tate Gallery on Pre-Raphaelite art in the age of Symbolism, though widening the picture of the influence of the English movement abroad to include the work of Swiss Symbolist artists, was still biased towards the French art world, displaying only one painting by the Italian Symbolist Gaetano Previati and making only a passing reference to the impact of Pre-Raphaelite art in Italy. This is unsatisfactory since in the 1880s and 1890s there was a pronounced interest in Pre-Raphaelitism among Italian artists and writers on art and literature which left a marked impact on their own work.
