Pandora

By 1871 Rossetti was painting Jane Morris over and over. She was the wife of his friend and colleague William Morris, and the great late obsession of his life, and here she becomes Pandora. He gives her not the jar of the old Greek story but a jewelled casket, shaped like an Italian marriage-chest, with the words Nascitur Ignescitur cut into the side, roughly 'it is born, it takes fire'. She has just eased the lid up, and a thread of red smoke is escaping into the room, all the troubles of the world let loose. There was a real casket. Rossetti had one made, and it stayed with the painting at least into the 1960s before it dropped out of sight and was lost.