“After ‘The Fall of Lucifer’ was finished, ‘Venus Concordia’, long patiently waiting its turn, was taken up again. With the three Graces who stand together at the right hand of the Goddess Edward took endless pains, to make them beautiful in themselves, yet subordinate to the beauty of Venus. And again, the beauty of each one of them must be measured, none transcending the other. As he stood altering the outermost of the Graces one morning, he said: “In my anxiety to make it a good figure in itself, I’ve made it too independent of the others, and it’s become an isolated figure instead of part of the group, and that won’t do, we musn’t indulge in favorite passages in a work.” In the pencil design for this picture he had filled the background with happy lovers, a scheme which when he began to paint it he decided to alter. As he rearranged the figures he said: “They must be quieter than the people in the drawing are, and we cannot have so many of them. I musn’t make them too amorous either: Love’s asleep you see (he lies as a sleeping infant at his mother’s feet), and only Beauty is going on till he wakes up. They are waiting for him to wake up and then they can begin.” “Oh,” said Mr. Rooke, that’s what I had not noticed; did you always intend that?” E. “From the very first.” –Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. I
Two subjects, Venus Concordia and Venus Discordia, appear in the Story of Troy scheme as predella panels flanking The Feast of Peleus (cat. no. 51). The two designs in pencil begun in 1871 fall into the relatively rare category of carefully finished presentation drawings, comparable in detail and execution with the Saint George series made six years earlier (cat. nos. 32, 35, 36). According to his own record of works, Burne-Jones began both these large paintings in 1872, concentrating on Venus Discordia in the following year. With such a mass of work soon to follow, however, including the Briar Rose and Perseus series, little serious further work can have been undertaken. Only in the 1890s was he able to return to some of the larger canvases begun so enthusiastically in this extraordinary period of fertile invention. That there is no significant change in composition to Venus Discordia from the drawing of 1871 may suggest that most of what we see is work of 1873; it would have been out of character for Burne-Jones to resist making improvements to concepts he might have considered immature. The drawing represents the violent consequences of baser human passions, represented by the four Vices (Anger, Envy, Suspicion, and Strife). The struggling male nudes carry clear echoes of the kind of early Italian Renaissance art in which Burne-Jones was totally absorbed at this date. The background frieze of figures is reminiscent of the celebrated engraving Battle of the Nudes (ca. 1465), by Antonio Pollaiuolo. There is a separate pencil drawing of the figure of Venus, almost identical in pose but with her head cupped in her left hand. 1 1. Christie's, November 13, 1992, lot 102
Should there be any doubt that Burne-Jones regretted, in his later years, the intense affair with Maria, the present painting will dismiss it. In comparing the painting with the original design made in 1871, the difference in sentiment is clear, the earlier drawing contains lovers at various states of physical intimacy and a frieze of lovers runs across the back of the composition. The features of Venus and the three Graces were all taken from Maria, however the painting of the 1890s has naked figures separate, apparently engrossed in their own thoughts and the models were some of the beauties he had surrounded himself with in his later life. Finally, the inclusion of columbines, the only part of the painting from the artist's hand, in the language of flowers ( Phillips 1825) is folly.