This is a study for the figure at the bottom of the stairs, holding cymbals. In the finished painting this figure has the features of Frances Graham, the daughter of Burne-Jones’ patron William Graham. However, for propriety, all of the figure studies for the painting were made from professional models. Another nude study for this figure was given by the artist to Helen Mary Gaskell (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) – it was an experiment in silverpoint and probably a copy of the present drawing. That drawing is inscribed ‘ANTONIA’ identifying the model as Antonia Caiva. There was a community of professional artist’s models living in Kensington, many of whom - including Antonia - came from Basilicata in southern Italy, tempted to London by the prospect of becoming models if they were willing to endure the long hours of posing naked. Antonia had a beautiful, statuesque physique and was the model for Burne-Jones’ brother-in-law Edward Poynter when he painted one of the greatest of all Victorian nudes, Andromeda of 1869 (sold in these rooms, 17 May 2011, lot 17 and now in the collection of Snr. Juan Antonio Perez Simon). She was also the model for Leighton’s nude Antique Juggling Girl (private collection). According to Burne-Jones’ studio assistant Thomas Matthews Rooke she was ‘the finest of his nude models.’ Burne-Jones himself described her as being ‘like Eve and Semiramis, but if she had a mind at all, which I always doubted, it had no ideas. She had splendour and solemnity: her glory lasted nearly ten years.’ She sat silently which may account for Burne-Jones’ unkind words – it may simply have been that she did not speak English very well. According to the artist Thomas Armstrong, she posed to pay her husband’s gambling debts. When she fell on hard times she wrote to Burne-Jones from hospital ‘Sir, I was always obedient to you. I am poor and ill.’1 She then vanishes and it is not known what became of her. 1. Thomas Matthews Rooke, quoted in Penelope Fitzgerald, Edward Burne-Jones – A Biography, 1975, pp. 82-83.