This anonymous sibylline figure draws back the curtain in an enigmatic way, similar to the Oracles of the Ancients. To the question of the meaning of life, the drawing appears to reveal that there is no answer. At this date c 1888 Burne-Jones, who was frequently unwell, expresses his intimations of mortality but finds consolation in painting The Last Sleep of Avalon. Many of his late paintings are meditations on the un-aswerable question.