This is one of a number of albums of photographs of Italian paintings and drawings once in Burne-Jones's possession. In view of the inscription on the flyleaf, it seems that they were put together after 1879, when Burne-Jones's address was changed from Fulham to West Kensington, but the photographs were probably acquired in the early '70s when his interest of Italian masters was at its height. Indeed some were copied in his sketchbooks at this period. They were nearly all reproductions of works in foreign collections and were probably sent to Burne-Jones by friends, such as Fairfax Murray or Charles Eliot Norton, who were travelling abroad. Lady Burne-Jones record that Norton would send 'catalogues of reproductions - engravings or photographs - over which Edward brooded', and she quotes a letter from Burne-Jones, wtitten in 1871, asking Norton to select photographs for him: 'you know what I like - the more finished the better. I love Da Vinci and Michael Angelo most of all. I ought not to buy a hundred, and yet I could soon choose a hundred. I do enclose a note of what strikes me at this distancebut will you choose me fifty, and let me meditate over a further number. And choose as you would for yourself .... all helpful pieces of modelling and sweet head drawing, and nakeds by Leonardo and M. Angelo and Raphael - all round, fat babies- oh you know so well. I like the Florentine men more than all others .... if Ghirlandajo draws sweet girls running, and their dresses blown about, O please not to let me lose one.' The selection of photographs which Norton might have made as a result of this letter is almost exactly that found in the present album,