Like his first journey to Italy in September and October 1859, Burne-Joness second visit was at the behest and expense of John Ruskin (1819-1900). 1 Carefully planned to take the artist to sites that Ruskin thought would be most beneficial to his protege s continuing education in Renaissance art, it took place in the spring of 1862, after both men had endured a difficult winter, Burne-Jones through illness and Ruskin having struggled to complete his essays on political economy (published as Unto This Last in 1862). Leaving their young son, Philip, with her parents, Georgiana Burne-Jones accompanied them; for all three it was an idyllic trip, Ruskin reveling in unaccustomed youthful company. 2 Traveling via Paris and Lucerne, the party reached Milan on May 31; there Burne-Jones began to fulfill his obligation to Ruskin to make copies after Old Master paintings and fres- coes. 3 During the two weeks they were in Milan, there must have been many visits to churches and chapels other than those to the cathedral and to Sant Ambrogio, which Georgie remembered, as well as to the Brera, where Burne-Jones made a study of Gaudenzio Ferrari's Adoration of the Magi (1545). 4 On June 12 the Burne-Joneses set off by themselves for Venice, returning to Milan by July 10. Before their return, Ruskin had written to Burne-Jones in Venice, reminding him of an outstanding promise to copy "two Christs" by Bernardino Luini (ca. 1480-ca. 1532) in San Maurizio, where he himself had begun a full-scale copy of the figure of Saint Catherine (now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). 5 An evocative account of Burne-Jones s work under Ruskins direction is given by Georgie; after musing on which "Monasterio" it was "to which we went in Milan, with Mr Ruskin, to see Luini s pictures," she quotes from a letter by Edward: "I am drawing from a fresco that has never been seen since the day it was painted, in jet darkness, in a chapel where candlesticks, paper flowers and wooden dolls abound freely. Ruskin, by treacherous smiles and winning courtesies and del- icate tips, has wheedled the very candlesticks off the altar for my use, and the saint s table and his [sic] everything that was his, and I draw every day now by the light of eight altar can- dles; also a fat man stands at the door and says the church is shut if anybody comes." 6 This pair of saints, identifiable by their attributes of mar- tyrdom as Apollonia and Agatha, are so like the work of Luini as to be ascribable to no other artist, although their exact source is not known. They represent the only known finished copies by Burne-Jones from the 1862 Italian journey, by which he had set enough store to present them in one of his most elaborate surviving hand-painted frames; unfortunately, their history prior to ownership by Alfred de Pass is unknown. Luini's work may not have been familiar to Burne-Jones, although it has always had an appeal to British taste, partly as a result of Ruskin s enthusiasm for its smoothness, simplicity, and grace (which others might call blandness). John Christian has noted, in this context, Ruskin's approval of those North Italian masters of the period 1470 to 1520 who "desire only to make everything dainty, delightful, and perfect." 7 That this aspect of early Renaissance art made an impression on Burne- Jones's own work can be judged by his developing fondness for rounded, lyrical, and enigmatic female figures of exactly the type he has here elected to copy. Burne-Jones himself recom- mended Luini's work to Agnes and Frances, the daughters of his patron William Graham, in advance of their tour of Italy in 1876: "Nobody is like him anywhere for perfect beauty . . . hunt him out everywhere — there is nothing in Italy afterwards more lovely to see." 8 1. See Christian 1975. 2. Ruskin wrote to Pauline Trevelyan from Milan, on July 20, 1862: 'Tve had the Joneses ... a good deal with me on this journey — the hotel waiters much puzzled to make out whether he was my son or Georgie my daugh- ter" (Virginia Surtees, ed., Reflections of a Friendship: John Ruskins Letters to Pauline Trevelyan, 1848-1866 [London, 1979], p. 188). 3. Some of the copies made for Ruskin were passed on to his Drawing School at Oxford, and are now in the Ashmolean Museum; other sketches and less finished copies are in an album at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Arts Council 1975-76, no. 333). 4. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 243; the copy after Gaudenzio is in the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, and is reproduced in Christian 1975, fig. 1 (Arts Council 1975—76, no. 334). 5. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 247: "I will have ever so many cwts. [hundredweights] of candles lighted in the Monasterio, and you must sketch the two Christs for me please. This is more important than anything in Venice to me" 6. Ibid., p. 248. 7. Ruskin, Works, vol. 19 (1905), pp. 443-44. 8. Quoted in Russell 1978, p. 424.
Bears signature on outer frame E BURNE-JONES FECIT If the frame was indeed painted by the artist it would date at the earliest from c1875 as the name is hyphenated. He began introducing this form some time between 1970 and 1877.
The most outstanding of Burne-Jones’s early Pre-Raphaelite designs is the extraordinary double frame of his copy after Bernardino Luini’s Saints Apollonia and Agatha, which he painted for Ruskin during their trip to Italy in 1862. The frame is a copy too – an almost exact copy of Rossetti’s 1863 frame for his diptych, The Salutation of Beatrice on Earth and in Eden [18]. It is even labelled on the back to this effect (although not in the artist’s hand): The Frame Blog