The drawing is a study for one of the allegorical figures in The Masque of Cupid as designed in 1872 (cat. nos. 60, 61). In Spenser's Faerie Queene "amorous Desyre" is described as a male figure, and although the pose here corresponds closely with his action — blowing sparks between his hands "that soone they life conceiv'd, and forth in names did fly" — the model is clearly a woman. She is, in fact, a little reminiscent of Maria Zambaco (cat. no. 49), but was probably someone of a similar physical type that Burne-Jones employed in the early 1870s, when his affair with the Greek beauty, though past its zenith, was apparently far from finished. While Maria seems to have embodied for Burne-Jones's the classicism of the late 1860s, her appearance was not Grecian in the usual sense of the term. With her rather pronounced features and luxuriant, wav- ing hair, she was, if anything, Botticellian, and her type con- tinued to haunt her lover's work when it assumed a more Florentine mode in the early years of the following decade. So far as the present drawing is concerned, it is tempting to go further, and suggest that its erotic character reflects the expe- rience of their liaison. Be that as it may, the study is a particularly fine example of Burne-Jones's draftsmanship, exquisite in conception and technique. It is not surprising that he never sold it, or that his son gave it to the Tate Gallery. The second example of his work to enter the British national collection, it was preceded only by King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (cat. no. 112) in 1900. [JC]
"Twixt both his hands few sparks he close did strayne, Which still he blew and kindled busily, That soone they life conceiv'd, and forth in flames did fly." The Faerie Queene, Book III, canto XII, stanza 9