Jane Morris Jane Morris Jane Morris (née Jane Burden; 19 October 1839 – 26 January 1914) was an embroiderer and English artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to William Morris (1834–1896), the English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist, whom she later married, and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Jane Burden was born in Oxford, the daughter of a stableman, Robert Burden, and his wife Ann Maizey, who was a laundress. At the time of her birth, her parents were living at St Helen's Passage, in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East, off
Christina Rossetti Later she became involved with the linguist Charles Cayley, but declined to marry him, also for religious reasons. The third offer came from the painter John Brett, whom she likewise refused. Rossetti sat for several of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's most famous paintings. In 1848, she was the model for the Virgin Mary in his first completed oil painting, "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin", which was the first work to be inscribed with the initials "PRB", later revealed to signify the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The following year she modelled for his depiction of the Annunciation, "Ecce Ancilla Domini". A line from her