Burne-Jones first conceived the idea for The Car of Love in 1871 or 1872, when he felt himself enslaved to the love of his life, Maria Zambaco – but work on the large painting in the V&A did not begin until the early 1890s, and was left incomplete at Burne-Jones’s death in 1898. The subject is from Petrarch’s The Triumphs, concerning the spiritual journey of the soul from the temporal world to eternity. It takes the form of six triumphal processions (Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity). Gods and mortals of both sexes are harnessed to Love’s colossal chariot.