#fanny cornforth

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (UK, 1828-1882)

Lady Lilith, 1866-73 Oil on canvas 99 × 85 cm Delaware Art Museum

first painted in 1866–67 using his mistress Fanny Cornforth as the model, then altered in 1872–73 to show the face of Alexa Wilding.

Mythical Lilith is a powerful, threatening, sensual woman who resists domination by men...

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Lady Lillith (1866-68) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Modelling in this piece is Fanny Cornthorth, who Rossetti had repeated affairs with. Naming the piece after Lilith is a reference to the sexual nature of their relationship.

Unlike Eve, Lilith was made from the same soil as Adam, not his rib. As a result, she refused to be subservient to Adam and ended up leaving him and the garden of Eden. She became a symbol of sexual promiscuity and sin.

“She represents the New Woman, free of male control, scourge of the patriarchal Victorian family,” - Virginia M. Allen, historian.

Fanny Cornforth

Fanny Cornforth met Rossetti in 1856, and became his model and mistress in the absence of Elizabeth Siddall whom Rossetti married in 1860. Cornforth’s first role was as to model the head of the principal figure in the painting Found, which she later described, saying he “put my head against the wall and drew it for the head of the calf picture”.