'I am sure that her love is all to her', wrote Rossetti of Maria Zambaco in 1870, the year before this picture was painted with Maria as the model for Venus. 'She is really extremely beautiful when one gets to study her face. I think she has got much more so in the last year with all her love and trouble.' For Burne-Jones to paint Maria as Venus, the goddess of love, was an obvious tribute to her beauty, but there is also a more covert reference to his love for her, and to her unhappiness. The title refers to the wedding of Venus, who in Greek mythology was unsuitably married to Vulcan and later fell in love with Mars. Maria also had made an incongruous marriage and later fell passionately in love with Burne-Jones. In spite of his love for her, the relationship brought her intense suffering before ending in 1872. Maria leans on a plinth, which supports a blindfolded Cupid, a reference to Maria as the victim of love. She is alone and pensively aloof from the preparations for her wedding, which are being carried out in the background. There are two versions of this painting. The first was a present for Maria Spartali on the occasion of her wedding to the American journalist, W J Stillman. It is now in the Fogg Art Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Like Maria Zambaco, Spartali was one of the wealthy close-knit Greek communities in London. Both women were renowned for their beauty and, with Aglaia Coronio, Maria’s cousin, were known as the ”˜The Three Graces’. This painting is the second version, which was carefully copied by Burne-Jones’s studio assistant, Charles Fairfax Murray, under the supervision of the Master, which was one of the usual practices in the studio.
This work is clearly recorded as a copy by Charles Fairfax Murray, of the original work by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. However, the cataloguing of this work is not so simple. Both John Christian and Stephen Wildman determined that everything that came out of Burne-Jones’s studio was by Burne-Jones. We have decided, in the Catalogue Raisonné of the artist’s work, to follow this cataloguing, because Burne-Jones himself thought of his studio in terms of a Renaissance studio, thus deeming everything issuing from it was by the master, Sir Edward Burne-Jones. However, where the studio is obviously involved in the final version, that is recorded, as is the artist(s) who worked on it, if known. The history of this work, as researched so far, is it was painted at the request of Euphrosyne Cassavetti (Euphrosyne Ionides), who was the first owner, mother of Maria Zambaco (the model for Venus) in the same year as the original, 1871. It seems entirely logical that she asked Burne-Jones for a version and did not directly ask Fairfax Murray. Since Fairfax Murray was employed in the Burne-Jones studio, the logical conclusion is that it is a studio work – and the fineness of the finish demonstrates the close involvement of the master. The problem is complicated further by the fact that Fairfax Murray worked as a copyist for other people including John Ruskin and William Morris.
My reasoning is: • Euphrosyne Cassavetti ordered the copy from Burne-Jones. • The studio workers worked on almost all of the finished works produced by Burne-Jones, at some stage or another. • So Fairfax Murray, who was employed in Burne-Jones’s studio for his working life, worked and finished many works, which we have decided either to call as by the Master or by the Master and Studio, as Burne-Jones considered everything the studio produced as by him. • This painting is one of the only instances which Fairfax Murray admits to working on, which does not negate all the others that he worked on. • Fairfax Murray is not entirely to be trusted, although I agree that this work is by him, but I believe also that the Master was responsible for the finishing, as it was very important to both of them. • If we stick by our cataloguing for all the other works and are consistent, then this work should be catalogued as: Burne-Jones and Studio and Fairfax Murray (specific, and not as usual Burne-Jones and Studio) as Burne-Jones would have sold it as by himself. In other words, just because this is one of the few works Fairfax Murray agrees he made, it should not differ in cataloguing to the rest of the works in the catalogue raisonné. So here you get the difficulty of two “experts” disagreeing over the cataloguing of a studio work. That is why the catalogue raisonné has been built to accommodate all opinions, by all scholars.
Rossetti letter to Madox Brown 23 January 1869: Poor Ned's affairs have come to a smash altogether, and he and Topsy, after the most dreadful to-do, started for Rome suddenly, leaving the Greek damsel beating up the quarters of all his friends for him and howling like Cassandra. Georgie stayed behind. I hear to-day however that Top and Ned got no further than Dover, Ned being so dreadfully ill that they will probably have to return to London.
Letter to Fairfax Murray D. L. M. I spoke 3 days back / about the Ven: Epith: & thought / you would have heard by now - / if you don't this week I will / send you 20. on Monday: ? / when some will have come to / me. - you write to Mr. Howard / Naworth Castle, Brampton Cumberland / everyouraffec. EBJ
In January 1869 his wife Georgina found a letter from Maria in his clothing and Burne-Jones reluctantly ended the affair.