No doubt Burne-Jones would not have been so addicted to series — whether in the context of illustration, decoration, or painting — if they had not satisfied his phenomenal powers of invention. There are times when his vision has an almost cin- ematic quality; it was as though he found it easier to visualize a subject in terms of a series of frames than as a single, all- embracing image. In much the same way, it was his penchant for compositions based on a single figure — that tendency so encouraged by Ruskin with his talk of "beautiful things or creatures" represented "in perfect repose" but replete with alle- gorical significance — that made him so ready to paint easel ver- sions of standing figures conceived to fill the narrow upright lights of stained-glass windows. Reference has already been made to Hope (cat. no. 163) and to the watercolours of girls gath- ering flowers based on the glass at South Kensington. Saint George (cat. no. 85) belongs to the same category, and there are many other examples: Caritas, Fides (fig. 81), Temperantia, The Days of Creation (fig. 79), paintings of the Cumaean and Delphic Sibyls (fig. 82). In fact, Burne-Joness fondness for this format led him to adopt it for paintings which had no connection with stained glass: Leyland's Seasons, The Wheel of Fortune (cat. no. 52), The Depths of the Sea (cat. no. 119).