The present lot is a study for the head of Fame in a panel surrounding the predella of the polyptich 'Story of Troy' at the Birmingham Museums and Art Galleries. The polyptych comprises of a central triptych which depicts 'Helen Carried off by Paris', 'The Judgment of Paris' and 'Helen Captive at the burning of Troy'. Below the triptych are three predella panels which show 'Venus Concorida', 'The Feast of Pelsus' and 'Venus Discorida'. In between and outside of the three predella panels are four panels depicting 'The Wheel of Fortune', 'Fame overthrowing Fortune', 'Oblivion conquering Fame' and 'Love subduing Oblivion'. The present lot is the study for Fame in 'Fame overthrowing fortune', the second of the four panels which surround the predella. The pictures are set in an elaborate Renaissance-style frame with putti, coloured marble and swags and festoons, possibly based upon Mantegna's San Zeno Triptych which Burne-Jones would have seen in 1862 in Verona. Burne-Jones began the polyptych in 1870 but two trips to Italy in 1871 and 1873 meant that he returned in 1873 to his studio filled with over sixty unfinished works.1 After 1873 the polyptych was taken to George Frederic Watt's studio in Little Holland House where Burne-Jones intended to work alongside Watts. However, the work was never finished and remains incomplete today. A large proportion of 'The Story of Troy' is the work of studio assistants. Burne-Jones would prepare highly detailed studies in pencil from which assistants would work, transferring the image onto canvas in terra-verde or burnt sienna. Once the assistant had completed the underpainting, Burne-Jones would then overpaint in colour. The present lot would have been one of the highly finished studies from which the studio assistant would create the underpainting. As Waters and Harrison comment, this method of working was the reason, along with Burne-Jones's depression, for this and many other works remaining incomplete. Hiring a large number of artists to prepare the work allowed for a large number of paintings to be started relatively quickly but it took a long time for Burne-Jones to overpaint and complete each work. The two outer predella panels were painted by T.M.Rooke and the central predella panel was painted entirely by studio assistants. Rooke recollected in 1922 that the outline figure work for the main subjects and a good deal of the detail were executed by him.2 The central panel depicting 'The Judgment of Paris' was painted by Rooke although a study by Burne-Jones in the Andrew Lloyd-Weber Collection shows that the composition of the final version differed to this original study. A number of studies exist for the polyptich. They vary from the sketch to the more finished study and are a useful aid in showing Burne-Jones's working method. Although unfinished, the 'Story of Troy' was the inspiration for a number of finished works by Burne-Jones including 'A Feast of Pelus' and three versions of 'The Wheel of Fortune'. 1 M. Harrison and B. Waters Burne-Jones (London 1973) p. 108. 2 ex. cat., Edward Burne-Jones Victorian Artist Dreamer (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1998) p. 152. Bonhams 2008