Every Sunday morning," Burne-Jones wrote to Charles Eliot Norton in 1874, "you may think of Morris and me together — he reads a book to me and I make drawings for a big Virgil he is writing — it is to be wonderful and put an end to printing." 1 From 1870 Morris had been making his own illu- minated manuscripts (see cat. no. 59), and in 1873 he conceived the idea of a folio of Virgil's Aeneid, with twelve large designs and a host of decorated initials. This would occupy Burne- Jones during their habitual Sunday meetings. It was an impos- sibly ambitious project, and Georgiana Burne-Jones recalled that "there were many things to prevent the completion of the scheme, amongst others the temptation Morris felt whilst fol- lowing the Latin to turn the great poem into English verse — which he did." 2 Six of the twelve books of the poem were transcribed onto vellum, however, Charles Fairfax Murray being entrusted with the task of copying Burne-Jones's major designs. 3 Murray later bought the book, whose text and deco- ration were completed by the calligraphers Graily Hewitt (1864-1953) and Louise Powell (1882-1956). Twenty-nine pencil drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, most of which are dated 1873 and 1874, include studies for ini- tial letters as well as for the twelve main half-page illustrations. Although on a small scale, they possess a linear strength and figurative solidity comparable with larger designs of a similar date for stained glass: The Burning of the Ships, for example, has the same kind of dynamic power as the cartoon for Rage (cat. no. 70). This subject shows the women of Troy incited by Iris, the messenger of the goddess Juno, to burn their menfolk's ships and put an end to their wanderings seven years after the fall of the city. Virgil's epic poem describes the various journeys of the Trojan prince Aeneas, son of Anchises and the goddess Venus. In the seventh book he reaches Italy and the court of Latinus, king of Latium. There he is offered the hand in marriage of the king's daughter Lavinia, whom the oracles had prophesied must become the wife of a foreign prince, even though she is secretly betrothed to Turnus, king of the Rutuli. In an omen of foreboding, Lavinia is immersed in the fires of the altar of Vulcan, which she is tending, an event that allowed Burne- Jones great play with billowing swirls of flame and hair: Out! How along her length of hair the grasp of fire there came, And all the tiring of her head was caught in crackling flame. And there her royal tresses blazed, and blazed her glorious crown Gem-wrought, and she one cloud of smoke and yellow fire was grown: And wrapped therein, the fiery God she scattered through the house: And sure it seemed a dreadful thing, a story marvellous, Turnus then claims Lavinia as his bride, causing Aeneas to take up arms against him, in a long struggle which he eventually wins. Initially, he is provided with armor by Venus, in a scene that parallels the arming of Perseus by Minerva in the Perseus series (cat. no. 88). Edward Burne-Jones, The Burning of the Ships, 1874. Pencil, 6 3/4 x 6 3/4 in. (17.2 x 17.1 cm). Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Edward Burne-Jones, Lavinia in the Palace ofLatinus, 1874. Pencil, 6 3/4 x 6 3/4 in. (17.2 x 17 cm). Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge 1. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 56. 2. Ibid. Morris's translation, TheAeneid of Virgil, was published in 1875. 3. Morris envisaged doing this himself, but admitted to Murray, in a letter of May 27, 1875: "I have begun one of the Master's [Burne-Jones] pic- tures for the Virgil: I make but a sorry hand at it at first, but shall go on at it till (at the worst) I am wholly discomforted. Meantime, whether I succeed or not in the end 'twill be a long job: so I am asking you if you would do some of them" (Morris, Letters, vol. 1, 1848-1880 [1984] p. 254). For a full account of the manuscript, see Brinton 1934.
It is possible that these drawings were originally mounted by the artist. Signatures on groups of drawings e.g. nos. 1183.9-12 suggest that this is probable. The whole of the series was offered for sale by Burne-Jones through The Fine Art Society in April 1896. It is assumed that the twelve major illustrations that headed each of the twelve books were arranged in three lots of four, which corresponded to their appearance in 1899 in the Burlington Fine Arts Club exhibition, then owned by Lawrence Hodson, it can therefore be assumed that he bought the set and the illuminated letters, offered separately. He bought all of the designs for The Aeneid at that time in six lots.
Dido seated swooning upon the sacred pyre; above her, Iris descends in a rainbow and cuts the fatal lock from her head; the half-built towers of Carthage in the background.