A large 1867 replica of Lady Lilith, painted by Rossetti in watercolor, which shows the face of Cornforth, is now owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

It has a verse from Goethe's Faust as translated by Shelley on a label attached by Rossetti to its frame: "Beware of her fair hair, for she excellsAll women in the magic of her locks,And when she twines them round a young man's neckshe will not ever set him free again.

"[4]On 9 April 1866 Rossetti wrote to Frederick Leyland: As you continue to express a wish to have a good picture of mine, I write you word of another I have now begun, which will be one of my best.

Other painters soon followed with their own mirror pictures with narcissistic female figures, but Lady Lilith has been considered "the epitome" of the type.

He and G. P. Boyce gathered large baskets of white roses from John Ruskin's garden in Denmark Hill, and returned with them to Rossetti's house in Chelsea.

[7] Sources disagree on whether Leyland or Rossetti initiated the repainting,[8][1] but the major change was the substitution of Alexa Wilding's face for Cornforth's.

[9] Characteristics of the painting that are commonly noted include the overt flower symbolism, and the unreal, crowded, depthless space, perhaps best shown by the bizarre mirror that reflects both the candles in the "room" and an exterior garden scene.

Murray claimed that the Lady Lilith in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was painted by Henry Treffry Dunn and was just "touched up" by Rossetti.

At that time Rossetti decided to directly contrast the two poems, renamed "Lilith" to "Body's Beauty" and published them on consecutive pages of his book The House of Life as sonnets LXXVII and LXXVIII.

In the painting she concentrates on her own beauty, luxuriates in her free, sensual hair, lacks the usual Victorian corset, and wears "clothes that look as if they are soon to be removed.

"[16] Samuel Bancroft, a textile mill owner from Wilmington, Delaware, bought the painting at Leyland's estate sale, held at Christie's on 28 May 1892, for £525.