The centre panel represents the Judgement of Paris, whose choice of Venus over Juno and Minerva as the fairest of the goddesses led to his exile and subsequent encounter with Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Lacedaemon. On the left is depicted Helen Carried off by Paris to Troy under the Protection of Venus, and on the right the denouement of the story, showing Helen Captive in Burning Troy as the city is besieged and sacked by the Greeks under the command of her vengeful husband. 1 The central scene on the predella below shows the Feast of Peleus, at whose wedding to Thetis the story begins; this is flanked by symbolic representations of Venus Concordia and Venus Discordia, appropriate to the passions aroused by love and hate. The four intermediate panels elaborate on the theme of Amor Vincit Omnia: Fortune, Fame Overthrowing Fortune, Oblivion Conquering Fame y and Love Subduing Oblivion. 2 A note supplied by T M. Rooke (1842-1942), Burne-Jones's studio assistant from 1867, when the painting came to Birmingham in 1922, reveals that the outline figure work for the main subjects and much of the detail were executed by him. "The Venus Concordia and Venus Discordia (in the predel- la) I had to paint in colour, under direction, from the two drawings in hard pencil, then belonging to Sir E.J. Poynter, in the winter of 1871-2." What Rooke calls the "Frieze of Babies struggling," along the entablature, "was outlined in scale for me to put in, but some of them were outlined on the picture in dark blue by the master himself." 3 The carefully worked Feast of Peleus was identified by Rooke as a reduction made in 1873 "by a young American, Frank Lathrop, a nephew of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and since a decorative painter in America, from the already completed somewhat larger panel in oil [cat. no. 51]." Further comments suggest that Burne-Jones did indeed have a three-dimensional execution in mind: "festoons and chaplets of jewels were also to be hung from the capitals at top, in the Crivelli manner. . . . The painted metal frames of the main sub- jects were sought out and studied from plaques in the South Kensington Museum." The four "bronze" medallions on the outer pilasters, of the Trojan princesses Oenone, Iphigenia, Polyxena, and Cassandra, were copied by Rooke from Burne- Jones's drawings. A number of studies by Burne-Jones for the putti at the base of the columns, in the decorative method of black and white chalk on brown paper and stylistically of a later date, confirm Rooke 's recollection that "the six bronze babies at the foot of the pillars were added later to diminish the peril . . . that the whole would be cut up for the sake of the separate subjects." 4 This must have happened when the canvas was returned after having been stored for many years in a studio built by G. F. Watts on the grounds of Little Holland House. 5 1. A bold cartoon for Helen Captive in Burning Troy, largely in white body- color on a red ground, was bought for the Birmingham collection at the first studio sale in 1898 (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 2i'98). 2. Described as "bronzes," for their possible translation into metalwork, these were copied by Rooke "in a green under-painting, from a set of water-colours on canvas [Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey] . . . and afterwards brought into tone and colour by the master's hand." Three separate enlargements in oil (lacking The Wheel of Fortune) were also made by Rooke, "and only touched on by the originator with suggestions for after-work, which, resulting from the change of scale, they never got" (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, 179-181*22). 3. Birmingham collection [1930], p. 31. 4. The three studies of children are in the Birmingham collection (184- i86'22); one was included in Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture (Matthiesen Gallery 1991-92, no. 4, illus.). 5. This studio, known as the Iron House or the "Tin-pot," was first occu- pied in 1875. "Though two large canvases stood there for many years, with certain designs upon them by the hand of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, he never painted there; and the canvases were at last claimed" (Mary S. Watts, George Frederic Watts [London, 1912], vol. 1, p. 290).
Not signed Fitzwilliam work list 1870... designed the triptych of Troy 1870 with the polyptych, would seem to be the beginning of Burne-Jones' working on a larger scale indicated by the entry for 1872 "This year I have 4 subjects which above all others i desire to paint, and count my chief designs, for some years to come. The Chariot of Love - to be painted life size The Vison of Britomart in 3 pictures also life size- The Sirens - small life size. and a picture of the beginning of the world - with Pan and Echo and sylvan gods, and a forest full of centaurs and a wild background of woods, mountains and rivers - upon these four subjects all my leisure time will be spent." In saying "leisure time" he indicates that these paintings listed were separate from commissions. In the same class was the Tory triptych, because of the pressure of earning a living these personal projects had to be put to one side and consequently remained unfinished. The assemblage of paintings for the Troy triptych owes something to the illustrations for Morris's poems for The Earthy Paradise and Jason. Because of the failure to complete the illustrated manuscripts with his designs Burne-Jones transferred his idea into combining them into the large polyptych which was then, after its abandonment, the source for the large number of separate paintings. This secular altarpiece was a monument to Burne-Jones's relationship with Maria. It parallels the recent upheavals in his own life, showing how a beautiful woman, Helen, had completely disrupted the course of history with devastating effect. Maria had entered the artist's apparently stable life with similar results, his relationship with Georgiana was forever changed and his intermittent periods of passion with Maria were to last for the rest of his life. The large painting begun subsequent to this watercolour, was put aside (in storage at G F Watts's studio, in the grounds of Little Holland House) and remained unfinished.
During this visit to Italy, Burne-Jones went to Verona, where, in the church of San Zeno, he would have seen Mantegna’s altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with saints in its magnificent aedicular frame. This divides the continuous interior space into three with its series of attached columns, separating the Virgin in the central field from the supporting saints at the sides. It is generally agreed that the fictive tripartite frame in Burne-Jones’s great canvas of The story of Troy, begun in 1870, is based on Mantegna’s altarpiece[22]. Burne-Jones follows Mantegna in creating a deep predella with painted scenes set between decorative dividing panels; his fictive frame is coloured as well as gilt, and the classical entablature sports a shallow-relief ‘Frieze of Babies struggling’, based on the frieze of putti decorating the internal space of Mantegna’s altarpiece. He eschued the segmental pediment and acroteria which crown Mantegna’s frame, and replaced its outer columns with square pillars, also adapted from those in the fictive architecture within Mantegna’s picture. This extraction of objects from within Mantegna’s pictorial space is extended to the two musical angels at the base of the Madonna’s throne: in Burne-Jones’s canvas they are multiplied to become the six ‘three-dimensional’ babies posed on the ‘altar-shelf and around the plinths[23]. Burne-Jones’s studio assistant, Thomas Rooke, indicates in his notes on the painting that it was intended to be executed as a wooden and bronze altarpiece containing painted panels: it would have been displayed on a kind of secular altar, and ‘festoons and chaplets of jewels were also to be hung from the capitals at the top, in the Crivelli manner’ [24]. If so, it may be the largest and most finished working design for a picture frame ever produced. The Frame Blog