A drawing for a series of four paintings based on an episode from William Morris' cycle of epic poems, 'The Earthly Paradise'. The first series is currently in the collection of Lord Lloyd-Webber, the second is in Birmingham's collection. As Simon Oberholzer has observed in his essay "Edward Burne-Jones's Pygmalion" (Edward Burne-Jones -The Earthly Paradise, Stuttgart, 2009) Burne-Jones has taken the architectural context from the illustration in Bernard Salomon, La Metamorphose d'Ovide figurée, Lyon 1557, no. 134, La Statue en Femme, in his design for the woodcut Pygmalion in his workshop carving c. 1867, for the story of Pygmalion and the Image, in The Earthly Paradise. It indicates that Burne-Jones was using a variety of sources for the illustrations, the chief one being the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and it also shows his interests moving from the medieval, of his early years to the art of the Renaissance.
Three frames of eleven pencil designs for wood blocks, on tracing paper. Drawn for an illustrated edition of “The Earthly Paradise”, never carried out. “A man of Cyprus, named Pygmalion, made an image of a woman fairer than any that had yet been seen, and in the end came to love his own handiwork as though it had been alive; wherefore, praying to Venus for help, he obtained his end, for she made the image alive indeed, and a Woman, and Pygmalion wedded her.” – The Earthly Paradise.