The Devout Childhood of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, 1852 (oil on canvas)

The quotation is from Butler's Lives of the Saints. The young Saint Elizabeth is so pious that she prays at the door of the chapel rather than wait for it to open. After 160 years, this important and beautiful early Pre-Raphaelite painting has been recently rediscovered. Collins was the most able of the Pre-Raphaelite painters after his close friends Millais and Hunt, and Rossetti. It is one of the first paintings Elizabeth Siddal modelled for, before she was claimed by Rossetti as his exclusive muse, and it is the first to feature the door later used by Holman Hunt in his famous painting The Light of the World. It is partly painted onto a wet white ground, making the silk of the dress wonderfully iridescent. St Elizabeth... was intended for the Royal Academy in 1851 as a companion picture to Millais’ Return of the Dove to the Ark, but Collins could not finish it in time, and it was shown instead the following year. Both pictures, which are similar sizes, are in identical frames designed by Millais. The attention to detail in the grass, pebbles and plants, and the religious subject matter, are typical of the small handful of early Pre-Raphaelite paintings that revolutionised British art.