Sidonia von Borcke (1548–1620) was a Pomeranian noblewoman who was tried and executed for witchcraft in the city of Stettin (today Szczecin, Poland). In posthumous legends, she is depicted as a femme fatale, and she has entered English literature as Sidonia the Sorceress. She had lived in various towns and villages throughout the country.
As Annabel Zettle states in her essay "Belle et Blonde et Coloree - The Early Gouaches" in The Earthly Paradise, pub Stuttgart 2009, it is interesting to note that Lucas Cranach the Elder painted the young and old Sidonia Von Bork (destroyed) in the first half of the sixteenth century and and alth0ught there were many reproductions of the painting made int nineteenth century it is not known if Burne-Jones had access to one.