Burne-Jones painted two versions of the 'Mirror of Venus', a watercolour begun in 1868 and a larger oil (now in the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon), begun in 1873, and finished in 1877. These six sheets (see nos. 2005.1-5) of studies are for the later picture, and are stylistically sufficiently distinct from the head studies 2001 a) and b) (also for the Mirror of Venus) to suggest that the latter are for the early watercolour version.