Label Text: 32Q: 2130 19th Century, written in 2015 Burne-Jones was commissioned to produce this watercolor as a wedding gift for Marie Spartali, his friend and model. The title can be translated as “at the bride chamber”—taken from the Greek term epithalamion, which is a song or poem composed for a bridal couple. The bride, heavily veiled, can be seen through the doorway, accompanied by the wedding party. In the foreground, Venus, holding a torch that sets the spark of love, leans against a statue of her son Cupid, whose arrow ignites the flame. Decorative sprigs of myrtle, sacred to Venus and representing eternal love, frame the scene. The celebratory nature of a wedding picture is strangely absent here; the melancholy goddess, subdued palette, and claustrophobic space accorded to the bridal procession may reflect Burne-Jones’s own somewhat fraught marital status. The figure of Venus was inspired by the artist’s former but not forgotten lover, Maria Zambaco, whose mother commissioned the work.
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.
In January 1869 his wife Georgina found a letter from Maria in his clothing and Burne-Jones reluctantly ended the affair.