How did Elizabeth Siddal’s death affect Dante Gabriel Rossetti?

The death of Elizabeth Siddal in 1862 profoundly altered the life and artistic trajectory of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Overcome by grief, he famously buried the only complete manuscript of his poems with her in Highgate Cemetery.1

His mourning was deeply intertwined with his artistic identity; he viewed his love for Siddal as a parallel to Dante Alighieri’s idealized devotion to Beatrice, a sentiment captured in his symbolic painting Beata Beatrix. Following her death, Rossetti moved to Chelsea and shifted his artistic focus toward a more aesthetic and sensuous style, moving away from the literary themes of his earlier work.1

Years later, in 1869, Rossetti arranged for the exhumation of his wife’s grave to recover his buried poems. The process visibly distressed him, and the subsequent publication of the poems in 1870 eventually led to a public controversy that, combined with his ongoing remorse and reliance on chloral and alcohol, contributed to a physical and mental collapse in 1872.1