Lady Lilith : Decoding the Mysterious Allure of Rosetti’s Iconic Pre-Raphaelite Muse

 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith, an iconic Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece housed in the Delaware Art Museum, represents an amalgam of the artist’s life-long devotion to celebrating female beauty. The intricate 19th-century depiction of a stunning self-absorbed, self-sufficient woman remains a powerful testament to the inescapable magnetism of Lilith’s myth. The mysterious story of Lilith, a primordial she-demon, spirit, and temptress, who arose out of mythology as a seductress of immense charm, entranced artists with her ambiguous allure.

In Ancient Mesopotamian mythology, Lilith appears as a demon or a spirit. At the same time, the Biblical texts sparingly refer to her as the first wife of Adam banished from Eden for refusing to comply. These dubious interpretations enticed the myth of Lilith, which profusely penetrated the arts in the 18th and 19th centuries as a multifaceted symbol. Goethe’s Faust (1808) opened the door for Lilith to take center stage in Victorian England’s literature and visual art, reaching a climax in art history with Rossetti’s painting.

 

 

The Birth of Lady Lilith
Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted Lady Lilith as a commission for Frederick Richards Leyland, a wealthy British ship-owner who collected works by Pre-Raphaelite painters. Rossetti commenced the masterpiece in early 1866, although specific sketches indicate that the idea arose around 1864. Rossetti alerted Leyland that the painting was finished in January 1868, but he continued working on it throughout the year. The first version of the canvas was delivered to the collector in the spring of 1869, suggesting Rossetti’s indecisiveness which could have prompted later revisions.

In 1872, Lady Lilith returned to the artist for significant alterations, with accounts differing on whether Rossetti or Leyland sparked the changes. The painting was finished in roughly a year, with the most radical transformation being replacing the face of Lady Lilith. The model for the first version was the voluptuous Fanny Cornforth, but her delicate features were replaced with the contemptuous and bold expression of Alexa Wilding.

Although Rossetti often established close and intimate relationships with his models and muses, including his wife Elizabeth Siddal and mistresses Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris, the artist wasn’t romantically involved with Wilding, who would become one of his favorite models. Alexa Wilding was the model of choice for Rossetti’s numerous iconic paintings and drawings, such as Sibylla Palmifera, Dante’s Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice, Veronica Veronese, and La Ghirlandata, to name a few.

 

The Sonnet
Parallel to his painting, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an accomplished English illustrator, translator, and poet. Rossetti frequently intertwined his paintings and poetry, crafting sonnets that commented directly on and aligned with specific works of art. Lady Lilith is an example of Rossetti’s so-called double works, complemented by the sonnet Body’s Beauty, inscribed on the frame.

Rossetti’s Lady Lilith pairs with Sibylla Palmifera, also featuring Alexa Wilding as the model, accompanied by the sonnet Soul’s Beauty. In 1881, the poems were published in Rossetti’s book The House of Life on two consecutive pages, highlighting the connection between the two visuals. This decision contrasts them as two opposing representations – one a portrayal of the beauty of virtue and the other the beauty of vice.

 

The Striking Symbolism
In Rossetti’s words drawn from correspondence to his friend Hake, the painting represents “a Modern Lilith combing out her abundant golden hair and gazing on herself in the glass with that self-absorption by whose strange fascination such natures draw others within their own circle”. Adding Lady to the title reinforces that intention to achieve a modern vision of erotic power epitomized in the voluminous hair as symbolic of the great seductress.

Intensely aware of her beauty and consumed by it, Lilith is depicted as lost in thought while combing her flowing golden-red hair and gazing at a mirror. The figure is surrounded by flowers, which create a flat, crowded space without depth, and a mirror in the upper left corner oddly reflects the candles in the front and a landscape not otherwise seen in the image.

The painting belongs to Rossetti’s so-called “mirror pictures” but is considered archetypal in influencing other painters to follow the trend. Manifesting the painter’s meticulous attention to detail, the image is also infused with intense symbolism, underlining Rossetti’s influence on the European Symbolists alongside the Aesthetic movement.

The semi-arch of white roses, which are timidly turning red, refers to the story of how the roses blushed at the sight of Eve’s beauty after she was created. The flowers are often construed to signify cold carnal love reduced to the corporeal, which could be hinted at in the sonnet Body’s Beauty which corresponds with the painting. A crown of poppies on Lilith’s lap implies her forgetfulness, and the foxglove on the desk symbolizes insincerity, encapsulating Lilith’s presumed fickle nature. Still, the flowing golden locks of Lilith’s hair represent the most potent and complex symbol of the Victorian era, a reflection of vitality and magic powers.

 

Origins and Influences
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 alongside English painters William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Partly modeled on the Nazarene movement, the association emerged as a form of protest against the rigid system of the Royal Academy of Arts. As such, the Pre-Raphaelites evolved as a loose group connected by a doctrine influencing and encompassing a wide range of artists. The principles centralized on the return to the grandeur of Quattrocento Italian art and its characteristic attention to detail, intense color, and sophisticated composition.

Inspired by Romanticism, the pre-Raphaelites often sourced their themes from medieval culture or literature, remaining faithful to the principle of mimesis. Their representations resulted from an exhaustive study of nature, which, anecdotally, once caused Elizabeth Siddal to catch a cold while posing in a bath full of water for Millais’ Ophelia.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s rising interest in Italian High Renaissance Venetian artists in the early 1860s prompted a change of direction. The change manifested in elaborate portraits of women, celebrating their eroticism or transforming them into celestial visions. Titian’s Lady at her Toilette presents a reference point for Lady Lilith, foreshadowed by Rossetti’s Aurelia (Fazio’s Mistress) from 1862-1963.

 

 

Lady Lilith Transcended
Although Rossetti’s oeuvre encompasses religious paintings and numerous works inspired by Dante Alighieri, his representations of the stylized, empowered femme fatale emerged as a critical recurring theme. Rossetti’s Lady Lilith represents an homage to the painter’s infatuation with beautiful women but overarches to a tribute to his mastery. Simultaneously, by transcending the myth, Rossetti represented a liberated woman refusing the men-imposed imperatives. Thus, the defiant Lady Lilith takes a significant spot in art history as a symbol of the feminist movement.

Rossetti’s original version of Lady Lilith with Fanny Cornforth as the model is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, while the painting with Alexa Wilding’s features was donated in 1935 to the Delaware Art Museum, where it is usually on display.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith, on loan from the Delaware Art Museum, is currently on view in the museum exhibition The Rossettis at the Tate in London until September 24th, 2023.

Featured image: Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Lady Lilith, 1866-1868, 1872-1873, detail, via Creative Commons.