The painting is based on extracts from the Song of Solomon in the Bible. "Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse ..."[1] "Awake, O north wind; and come thou south; blow upon my garden ..."[2] It shows the bride walking in the garden with female personifications of the two winds blowing towards her. On each side of the bride are white lilies, symbolising her virginity. The pose of the bride is inspired by Botticelli's figures. The painting is based on an earlier design by Burne-Jones for a tapestry.[3] Sponsa de Libano forms part of the Victorian collection in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is painted in gouache and tempera on paper and measures 332.5 centimetres (131 in) by 155.5 centimetres (61 in). The picture was purchased by the gallery in 1896.[3] In the same year the gallery purchased a study for the painting. This had been prepared in about 1891, drawn in chalk on paper, and shows the head used for one of the winds. The model was a twelve-year-old Jewish girl, who modelled for both winds, and was told to "look wild and blow with your lips". The study is now held by the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, Merseyside.[4] 1. Chapter 4, verse 8, King James Version 2. Chapter 4, verse 16, King James Version 3. The Walker Art Gallery, London: Scala, 1994, p. 76, ISBN 1-85759-037-6 4. Study for Sponsa de Libano, National Museums Liverpool, archived from the original on 24 May 2006, retrieved 24 April 2010
He almost never identified his models, and it is generally unwise to haz- ard a guess on the subject. There is an understandable temp- tation to discern the features of, say, the glamorous Maria Zambaco in some given drawing, and it is true that she and other friends and relatives — Georgie and Margaret Burne- Jones, May Morris, Fanny Cornforth, Marie Spartali, Frances Horner, and so on — can sometimes be recognized. But the vast majority of Burne-Jones's sitters were professional mod- els who remain anonymous. We shall never know the name of the "little Houndsditch Jewess, self-possessed, mature and worldly, and only about twelve years old," who sat with such abandon for the heads of the winds in Sponsa de Libano (fig. 80; see also illus. on p. 188). 23 Equally elusive is the "new model" he discovered toward the end of his life — "a curious type," Graham Robertson recalled, "quite away from his usual face. She had very small eyes which gave her a rather sly expression, and she evidently interested him (pictorially) very much." 24 Even if we know their names, Burne-Jones's models cannot necessarily be identified. Who would recognize Bessie Keene and her mother, two professional models he often used; or Edith Gellibrand, an actress (stage name Edith Chester), who is said to appear in The Golden Stairs (cat. no. 109); or Reserva, "a tall, dark girl of gipsy blood" who was also on the stage, Luke Ionides noticing her in the chorus of The Yeoman of the Guard} 25 We should never underestimate Burne-Jones's extraordinary capacity to impose his ideal on his models. "I have often watched him drawing from the life," Robertson wrote, "and so strong was his personal vision that, as I gazed, Antonelli the model began to look very like Burne-Jones's study, although the study never began to look like Antonelli." 26
In the large painting 'Sponsa di Libano' (The Bride of Lebanon) two female figures in swirling draperies hover over the bride. They represent the North and South winds, blowing fragrant breezes: 'Awake O North wind; and come then south; blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out.' The subject comes from the Song of Solomon in the Bible. This study for the wind on the left was made from a twelve year old cockney Jewish girl who posed for both North and South winds. The artist asked her to 'look wild and blow with your lips.'