For a brief shining moment in English history, there were questing knights, virtuous maidens, magic spells and enchanted castles. But it wasn't Camelot. This was the era of the Pre-Raphaelites, a short-lived art movement in the 1850s-'70s that drew inspiration from ancient myths, fairy tales and epic poems.

The Pre-Raphaelite school, founded by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1848, burned brightly, if ever so briefly, but its impact on the art and textile world was indelible, influencing the designs of William Morris and creation of the Arts and Crafts Movement, before falling into disregard with the rise of modernism. The Pre-Raphaelites are the focus of a new exhibit this month at the San Diego Museum of Art.

"Waking Dreams," a touring exhibition owned by the Delaware Art Museum, is a diverse 130-piece exhibit that features a rich variety of artwork of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and the many other art forms they influenced -- wallpaper designs, jewelry, glassware, furniture and writing.

The Pre-Raphaelite movement was a reactionary group of English artists who rebelled against the Royal Academy's strict guidelines for subject matter and style based on the work of Renaissance-era artists (like Raphael).

Led by Rossetti, this new breed of artists (who called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, or P.R.B.) embraced the type of romantic idealism seen in early Italian art. Championed enthusiastically by the art critic John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites included William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Browne, Frederick Sandys, Charles Fairfax Murray and Simeon Solomon, among others.

Their media ranged from oils and watercolors to pencil drawings, engravings, hand-painted tiles and photography. They favored bright jewel colors, painted with close attention to detail (particularly Millais and Rossetti), were inspired by nature and drew their subject matter almost exclusively from literature -- the plays of Shakespeare, the writings of Dante and Chaucer, the poetry of Keats and Tennyson, Bible stories, Arthurian legends, and ancient Greek and Norse myths.

Spread through three rooms, the San Diego exhibit features some true masterpieces of the movement.

Two of the movement's finest examples are encountered near the exhibit's entrance, Burne-Jones' epically scaled "The Council Chamber" (1872-1892), depicts seven long-dormant figures in a throne room overgrown with briars (from the sleeping beauty legend). The thorny roses tumbling over the chamber walls might have inspired the wallpapers of William Morris, the renowned designer who would eventually share his summer home (and his wife, Jane) with Rossetti.

Also striking is Hunt's "Isabella and the Pot of Basil," inspired by Keats' poem about a mourning Italian woman who finds her lover, Lorenzo, slain by her brothers, so she cuts off Lorenzo's head and hides it in a pot underneath the roots of a basil plant (which the brothers later steal). The sharply detailed and brilliantly colored large-scale work depicts a dark-haired woman embracing a potted plant, her long black hair cascading over the side of the golden vessel (or could it be his hair emerging from within?); a rumpled bed in the background suggests their forbidden romance. In the poem, Isabella dies of a broken heart and her devotion is clear in Hunt's painting.

Perhaps the most famous of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings is Millais' "Ophelia," a haunting 1852 painting of Hamlet's drowning fiancee floating in a river, surrounded by flowers. "Ophelia" isn't featured in this exhibition, but it likely inspired Madox Brown's 1870-71 painting "Corsair," drawn from the 1813 novel about a pirate captain who returns to his love, only to find she has died of a broken heart upon the false news of his death. In the lushly romantic painting, the pirate Conrad stands by the deathbed of his love, Medora, her white-gowned body strewn with flowers, very similar in look and style to Millais' "Ophelia."

Sandys is best known for his 1859 painting "Mary Magdalene," here depicted with red hair and a rosy complexion against the backdrop of a green tapestry, but this exhibit also showcases his exquisitely detailed wood engravings, including the artist's personal favorite, "The Old Chartist," a richly embellished pastoral scene depicting a tired worker relaxing by a river's edge. It was created in 1861 to illustrate George Meredith's poem about the injustices of life for the working man.

The exhibit's most impressive section is the room filled with "Stunners," the word used to describe the large, romantic portraits of beautiful women (mostly painted by Rossetti) that were hot collector's items in the 1860s-'70s. Drawn from Greek myths and literature, the "Stunners" were feminine ideals, often depicted with thick, flowing red hair, full red lips and voluptuous bodies.

Rossetti often plucked his Stunners models off the streets, including dressmaker Elizabeth Siddall (who would later become his wife), prostitute Fanny Cornforth (who posed as a fallen woman in Rossetti's famous 1853 street scene "Found," then moved in with him after Siddall's death), seamstress Alexa Wilding (seen here in the 1872 paintings "Lady Lilith" and "Veronica Veronese") and William Morris' wife, Jane, seen in the 1871 work "Water Willow."

Rossetti never got over Siddall's 1862 death (she overdosed on laudanum eight months after their first child was stillborn) and was plagued with mental breakdowns and drug and alcohol addiction until his premature death at age 53. With his decline, so went the Pre-Raphaelite movement, which might have disappeared into history if not for the support of Ruskin, who can be seen in Millais' famous 1853 portrait "The Waterfall," painted just months before Ruskin's wife, Effie, would leave their unconsummated marriage for Millais.

The collection for "Waking Dreams" was donated to the Delaware Art Museum in 1935 by the estate of Wilmington textile manufacturer Samuel Bancroft. Between his first purchase (of Rossetti's "Water Willow" in 1890) and his death in 1915, Bancroft amassed the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art outside the United Kingdom.

"Waking Dreams" continues at the San Diego Museum of Art through July 29.