ABSTRACT
When John Ruskin referred to Dante Alighieri in The Stones of Venice as 'the central man of all the world', he captured a crucial moment in the trajectory of the importance of the Italian poet in nineteenth-century Europe. The impact of Pre-Raphaelitism on Italy has cast a different light on the importance of British culture in post-Risorgimento Italy. Studies of the cultural and artistic relations between the two countries, however, tend to concentrate almost exclusively on the British reception of Italian culture. Rossetti's paintings and drawings inspired by Dante was to refocus our attention on the extraordinary nature of his involvement with Dante's works. D. G. Rossetti's most important contribution to the cult of Dante in Victorian Britain remains, however, the new image of Dante which characterises his works. Dante still had a strong political connotation; this political and ideological dimension resurfaced in the immediate prewar years when Dante and his commentators became the target of the violent rhetoric of Marinetti.
