Lizzie Siddal

Lizzie Siddal's face is recognized the world over:she was the face of the Pre-Raphaelites, the first "super­ model" muse who inspired some of the greatest artistic achievements of her day. Yet few now know her name. In her own right,she was a poet and an artist whose work at one point garnered greater success than the man who later became her husband: Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Struggling her entire adult life to navigate the Pre-Raphaelite artistic circle and her passionate relationship with Rossetti, it was the loss of a stillborn daughter and post-partum depression (considered shameful at the time) that irrevocably destroyed Siddal: she took her own life at the age of 32,possibly due to a second failed pregnancy. I celebrate Lizzie Siddal as one of the multitude of women whose accomplishments are overshadowed in life and death by the men whom they inspire.