Dante Gabriel Rossetti (May 12, 1828 - April 9, 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats. His later poetry was characterized by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, while also creating art to illustrate poems. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement. For many years, he worked on English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova (published as The Early Italian Poets in 1861). In 1870 in he published, Poems by D. G. Rossetti. They created controversy when they were attacked for eroticism and sensuality. The reaction of critics to Rossetti's first collection of poetry contributed to a mental breakdown in 1872. Toward the end of his life, he sank into a morbid state, darkened by his drug addiction to chloral hydrate and increasing mental instability. He died in 1882 of Brights Disease, a disease of the kidneys from which he had been suffering for some time.