The artist identified the subject on a label attached to the original frame: "Beware of her fair hair, for she excells [sic]/ All women in the magic of her locks,/ And when she twines them round a young man's neck/ she will not ever set him free again." These lines are taken from Shelley's translation of the Walpurgisnacht scene in Goethe's Faust. Here, as in Rosetti's other drawings and paintings of Lady Lilith, the artist's mistress, Fanny Cornforth, served as the model.

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