Joseph Severn

In 1819, Severn was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Academy for his painting Una and the Red Cross Knight in the Cave of Despair which was inspired by the epic poem The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser.

The trip was intended to cure Keats's lingering illness, which he suspected was tuberculosis; however, his friends and several doctors disagreed and urged him to spend some time in a warm climate.

The two men remained in Naples for a week before travelling to Rome in a small carriage, where they arrived mid-November 1820 and met Keats's physician, Dr. James Clark.

In Rome they lived in an apartment at number 26 Piazza di Spagna, just at the bottom right of the Spanish Steps and overlooking Bernini's Barcaccia fountain.

In fact, his father was so incensed by his departure that, as Severn reported in a late memoir, "in his insane rage he struck me a blow which fell me to the ground.

These journal-letters now represent the only surviving account of the poet's final months and as a consequence are used as the primary historical source for biographers of Keats' last days.

[8] Severn was also instrumental in helping to found the British Academy of Arts in Rome, which drew the support of such influential figures as the Duke of Devonshire, John Flaxman and Sir Thomas Lawrence.

[10] On his return to England in 1841 Severn fell on hard times, trying desperately to earn enough money to support his growing family by painting portraits.

Although he was never able to match his early artistic success in Rome and eventually had to flee his creditors for the Isle of Jersey in 1853, between 1819 and 1857, Severn exhibited 53 paintings at the Royal Academy in London.

[12] Many of the kingdoms, principalities and dukedoms in the Italian peninsula had come together under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel II, but Rome and its surroundings remained as the rump of the Papal States.

This was the case throughout the majority of Severn's tenure as Consul, as Pope Pius IX managed to retain a fragile hold on power, relying on a garrison of French troops to control Rome.

[13] Although the official position of the British government on "The Roman Question" was neutrality and nonintervention, Severn often took diplomatic action that his superiors viewed as exceeding his mandate as Consul.

[17] One of his most remarkably inventive works is the Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1839), based on Samuel Coleridge's famous poem, which recently sold at Sotheby's for £32,400.

[18] Severn also painted such works as Cordelia Watching by the Bed of Lear, Shepherds in the Campagna, Shelley Composing Prometheus Unbound, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, Portia with the Casket, Ariel, Rienzi, The Infant of the Apocalypse Saved from the Dragon, a large altarpiece for the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura at Rome, and many portraits of statesman and aristocrats, including Baron Bunsen and William Gladstone.