The emotional culmination of the Perseus Series is the Rock of Doom, where Perseus discovers the naked Andromeda left chained to a rock for a dragon's prey. The composition was completed twice, as a gouache (Southampton Art Gallery) and as an oil painting (1885-1888, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart). The present drawing dates from the conception of the series in the mid 1870s and is a typical example of Burne-Jones's precise pencil technique of the date. In the original scheme, Burne-Jones emphasised the decorative qualities of the composition by using the Medieval and Renaissance device of `continuous narration' in which more than one episode from a story appears on the same canvas. He combined the Rock of Doom with the Doom Fulfilled in which Perseus kills the monster. This can be seen in the modello in the Tate Gallery (TG 3458) and in an unfinished painting of circa 1876 (Art Gallery of South Australia). The present drawing duplicates the pose of Andromeda in the early versions, which was altered in the final canvases, suggesting that it was produced in 1875 or 1876 at the very beginning of Burne-Jones's work on the scheme.
In the final painting the artist has removed the arm from across the body and placed it behind in preference for a complete standing figure.