Lady Lilith

In a letter to Frederick Leyland on April 9, 1866, Rossetti wrote that he began to write a new work, which will become one of his best works ^[6] . In 1866, Leyland bought Lady Lilith, and in 1869 became its owner; The price of the painting was 472.1 £. Two large-scale sketches of the 1866 painting and sketches that could have been created earlier than this date have been preserved. The picture depicts Lilith , a biblical character - the first wife of Adam , but this is a modern interpretation of the heroine. Girl admires herself in the mirror. Many artists depicted such narcissistic virgins with mirrors, but Lady Lilith is considered the personification and standard of this type of painting ^[7] .

Rossetti Assistant Henry Treffrey Dunn , said that the final stage of the painting was a floral background, for which they brought large baskets of roses from John Ruskin 's garden; it is assumed that it was Dunn, and not Rossetti, who later recreated the image of “Lady Lilith” on paper in colored pastel, which is now stored in the Metropolitan Museum of Art ^{[8] [9]} .

Historians disagree about who initiated the replacement of the model's faces - Leyland or Rossetti ^{[10] [1]} . In 1872, the painting returned to the artist, and by December of the following year he rewrote his face and sent the work back to Leyland ^{[1] [11]} . At the time of work, model sitter Alex Wilding was 27 years old, Rossetti paid her £ 1 per week for work. Previously, Rossetti also rewrote the picture “ Venus Verticordia ”, replacing the image of the face of the previous model with the face of Alexa Wilding ^{[12] [11]} .

Art historians note the use of symbolism of colors in the picture - white roses, symbolize sensual love, also reflects the tradition of painting, in which roses turned red when Eve appeared ; the poppy in the lower right corner represents sleep, oblivion, the languid and lazy nature of Lilith; Digitalis digitalis can symbolize insincerity ^{[13] [1]} .

The figure of Lilith is often seen as a symbol of the feminist movement, since she is a strong formidable woman dominating a man; in the picture, she is focused on her own beauty and is not dressed in a traditional Victorian corset, but in loose clothing ^[14] . A special symbolism in this regard is hair. In her book “The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination”, Elizabeth Jitter writes that the more attention and space for the image of hair is given in the picture, the stronger the sexual subtext of the image; in folk traditions, literature and psychoanalysis, fluffy thick hair is a sign of powerful sexuality and even debauchery ^[7] . Also in the lines of the sonnet, Jitter sees a reference to castration :

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From 1865 to 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti worked on the painting " Sibyl Palmifer ", the model was also Alexa Wilding. The painting was sold to George Ray, Frederick Leyland also ordered a copy for himself, but it was not completed ^[16] . The word "Palmifera" means "bearing palm"; in the model’s hand is a palm leaf. By itself, palm trees and butterflies can symbolize the spiritual principle, and red roses and poppies carry flower symbolism in themselves ^[16] .

The sonnet of authorship of Rossetti himself was painted on the frame of the painting Beauty of the Soul ^[16] , on the frame “Lady Lilith” another sonnet was painted. Pairs of paintings and sonnets were first published together by Algernon Charles Swinburne in 1868. In 1870, poems were published in Rossetti's collection of “Sonnets for Pictures”. In 1881, Rossetti renamed the Lilith sonnet to Beauty of the Body and published two sonnets side by side in The House of Life, thereby directly combining a pair of contrasting works ^{[16] [17]} .

After the purchase, Frederick Leyland kept the painting in his office, along with five other female portraits of the authorship of Rossetti ^[18] . May 28, 1892 at an auction at Christie's, American collector Samuel Bancroft Jr. bought “Lady Lilith” for £ 525, then he bought four more works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, becoming the owner of one of the largest collections of Pre-Raphaelite works outside the UK. in 1935, Bancroft donated the painting and his entire collection to the Delaware Museum of Art ^[4] .

In 1883, the painting was exhibited in London, in 1892 - in Philadelphia. In the XX and XXI centuries, the painting visited American foreign exhibitions - in Richmond (1982), Tokyo (1990), Birmingham and Williamstown (2000), London, Liverpool and Amsterdam (2003) ^[6] . In 2012, the work was exhibited at the Tate Gallery , in 2013 - at the Washington National Gallery of Art .

• Wildman, Stephen. Waking Dreams, the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum. - Art Services International, 2004 .-- P. 395.

• Samuel Bancroft Pre-Raphaelite Paintings Collection Site