If "the noblest painting is a painted poem", what could be more in tune with our times than Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott? Started during the pandemic, this painting makes us ponder a well known artistic dilemma: living a life of imagination in the isolation of our own golden tower while searching for a way to face the reality of the outside world. The mirror - here materialized by the surface of the canvas - emphasizes the role of the artist's vision in the stillness of self-reflection. The red swallow, a Victorian sweetheart symbol, embodies the ambivalence of love in the poem; both a curse and a cure.