Burne-Jones’s first attempt at painting in oils may have been as early as 1857, when he was noted by Rossetti to have chosen the subject of The Blessed Damozel in response to "an order for an oil picture from Mr. Plint of Leeds." 1 Originally conceived as a diptych, it was possibly laid aside in favor of work on the Oxford Union mural project in that year: an unfinished oil on panel survives (private collection)^ and a single-figure subject was later taken up and completed as a watercolor in i860 (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.). The commission for the Adoration triptych at Brighton (cat. no. 10) seems to have encouraged a few additional small female figure subjects, including a study of Georgiana against a background of roses (1862; known as The Rose Bower 3 ) and the present picture. This has been identified as Hope from its sim- ilarity to a watercolor (1862; private collection) that shows the young woman holding a ball inscribed with the medieval proverb "If hope were not, heart should break." 4 Although only lightly sketched, the dress has a distinctly Venetian shape, suggesting both the artists awareness of Renaissance portraiture and a pos- sible influence of the idiosyncratic half-length oils by Rossetti, such as Bocca Baciata (fig. 62). It may well be the same model, Fanny Cornforth, who was sitting to Burne-Jones by 1858, and who appears as the femme fatale in Merlin andNimue{c3X. no. 15). 1. Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Bell Scott, June 1857; see Rossetti, Letters, vol. 1 (1965), p. 325. 2. Arts Council 1975- 76, no. 23; sold at Sotheby's, June 19, 1984, lot 27. The Fogg watercolor is illustrated in Harrison and Waters 1973, pi. 45. 3. Sotheby's Belgravia, June 20, 1972, lot 109 (28 x 21 in., with arched top); subsequently with the Maas Gallery, London. 4. New Gallery 1892—93, no. 4; 1898-99, no. 28; and Arts Council 1975-76, no. 35 (now identified as a watercolor copy by Edward Clifford).