Rossetti's Lady Lilith, begun in 1866 and reworked until 1873, is the Pre-Raphaelite stunner at its most concentrated form — a half-length portrait of a beautiful woman with long unbound hair, surrounded by Victorian symbolic props, named after Adam's mythical first wife from medieval Jewish folklore. The hidden contents, the model, the sonnet on its frame, and how Lilith entered Pre-Raphaelite painting.

A muse is not a model. A model sits for one painting. A muse sits for thirty, and slowly the painter's whole way of seeing rearranges itself around her face. The women below are the ones who reorganised the careers of the men who painted them.