Ophelia has returned to Tate Britain! 🖼️ John Everett Millais’s 1851 painting of Ophelia is one of the best-known images from Shakespeare’s play 'Hamlet'. 🥀 But who was Ophelia in Millais' painting? https://bit.ly/3vOmWIE In this film we learn about 19-year-old artist and poet Elizabeth Siddal, and her life story, so entwined with Shakespeare's Ophelia. 🌼 | Tate

The model of the painting is Elizabeth Siddal, who also posed as Ophelia for Millais a decade earlier. She became the muse and love of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The white poppy represents laudanum (an opium drug) and the means of her death at the age of 32. Rossetti often referred to Elizabeth as "The Dove’’. Dante Gabriel Rossetti is depicting his own loss through the story of his lifelong favorite author Dante Alighieri. Rossetti not only shared a name and origin with Dante Alighieri but also ob