Nuova," which had not yet been translated; thirdly, to afford
new illustrations of mediaeval life and thought, partly by treating
legendary matter in the popular ballad form, and partly by treating
romantic matter of his own invention with the rich colour and sensuous
imagery which belonged to his pictorial art.

"Perhaps," writes Mr. Caine,[18] "Catholicism is itself essentially
mediaeval, and perhaps a man cannot possibly be a 'mediaeval artist,
heart and soul,' without partaking of a strong religious feeling that is
primarily Catholic--so much were the religion and art of the Middle Ages
knit each to each. . . . Rossetti's attitude towards spiritual things
was exactly the reverse of what we call Protestant. . . . He constantly
impressed me during the last days of his life with the conviction that he
was by religious bias of nature a monk of the Middle Ages." All this is
true in a way, yet Rossetti strikes one as being Catholic, without being
religious; as mediaeval rather than Christian. He was agnostic in his
belief and not devout in his practice; so that the wish that he suddenly
expressed in his last illness, to confess himself to a priest, affected
his friends as a singular caprice. It was the romantic quality in the
Italian sacred art of the Middle Ages that attracted him; and it
attracted him as a poet and painter, not as a devotee. There was little
in Rossetti of the mystical and ascetic piety of Novalis or Zacharias
Werner; nor of the steady religious devotion of his friend Holman Hunt,
or his own sister Christina.

Rossetti, by the way, was never in Italy, though he made several visits
to France and Belgium. A glance at the list of his designs--extending to
some four hundred titles--in oil, water-colour, crayon, pen and ink,
etc., will show how impartially his interest was distributed over the
threefold province mentioned above. There are sacred pieces like "Mary
Magdalen at the Door of Simon the Pharisee," "St. Cecily," a "Head of
Christ," a "Triptych for Llandaff Cathedral"; Dante subjects such as
"Paolo and Francesca," "Beata Beatrix," "La Donna della Finestra,"
"Giotto Painting the Portrait of Dante"; and, in greater number,
compositions of a purely romantic nature--"Fair Rosamond," "La Belle Dame
sans Merci," "The Chapel before the Lists," "Michael Scott's Wooing,"
"Meeting of Sir Tristram and Yseult," "Lady Lilith," "The Damozel of the
Sanct Grail," "Death of Breuse sans Pitie," and the like.