This sketch by Edward Burne-Jones may be a study for a stained-glass window illustrating a medieval subject. The angularity of the folds of drapery echoes the rather flat, pattern-like forms of medieval pictures. This early style of art was admired by Burne-Jones and members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Burne-Jones was one of the most important artists of his generation.
An early study in which the model is posed in a style of dress based upon that of the fourteenth century, placing the drawing within Burne-Jones's period of medievalism. The later costume seen in the tile design of Alcestis or Phyllida shows how he has become more interested in the costume style of the mid-fifteenth century. Under the influence of Ruskin and Watts, who did not approve of the style based upon illuminated manuscripts that Burne-Jones had been studying since his time as a student, they persuaded him to look closer at the Renaissance period, thus he discovered the illustrations in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna (1499) and the Ulm edition of Bocciacio's De Claris Mulieribus of 1473, which caused the change in the style o the draperies that he favoured.