Certain ideas that emanated from Burne-Jones's ever- fertile imagination never quite came to fruition. One of these was the Passing of Venus. Conceived as a design (referred to as "Triumph of Love") for a tile panel in 1861/ the image of Venus riding in a chariot drawn by doves, with young maidens offering their hearts up to her as she passes, reappears twelve years later as the background decoration in Laus Veneris (cat. no. 63). The amalgam of literary sources includes the medieval Romaunt de la Rose and Chaucer's reworking of it, together with the concept of Love Triumphant from Petrarch s Trionfi. A "triumph of Venus for a long picture for Percy Wyndham" is listed under 1875 in Burne-Jones's work record, followed in 1878 by a "golden panel of triumph of Love for Duke of Westminster," executed in gilt gesso; in 18 81 there is an addi- tional entry: "Passing of Venus begun." The "long picture" perhaps begun in 1875 is probably the oil on panel known as The Passing of Venus, last seen on the art market in 1973. 2 One of Burne-Jones s strangest works, it is completely changed from the first "Triumph of Love," retain- ing only the position of Venus at the upper left of the compo- sition; apparently unfinished, her ethereal naked form sits on an odd winged plinth. Three young women below avert their eyes from her, while a further apprehensive group of female figures on the right clusters around the Greek woman poet Sappho. A bleak mountainous landscape provides a backdrop. It seems likely that the reference intended here was to the Sapphics in Swinburne's Poems and Ballads (a book dedicated to Burne-Jones on its publication in 1866), in which "the white implacable Aphrodite" returns in her chariot "Back to Lesbos, back to the hills whereunder / Shone Mitylene." Some superb pencil studies for the individual female figures, all dated 1877, are shared between the Tate Gallery and Birmingham; appro- priately for this peculiar project, they are all given a distinctive appearance by being drawn on an olive-green prepared ground. 3 The delicately painted fan (cat. no. 99) seems to be the first work in which all the elements of the composition are finally drawn together. 4 In front of the car of Venus is interposed the figure of Cupid, almost identical to that in Cupids Hunting Fields (cat. no. 115); he has already claimed one victim, and the Sapphic women look on anxiously as he again draws his bow. In addition to some background rocks akin to those in The Rock of Doom (cat. no. 95), Burne-Jones adds delightful deco- rative touches on the guards of the fan, symbolic of the earth, sea, and sky. On the reverse is a design of intertwining branch- es containing roundels of lovers embracing, reminiscent of the couples used to similar effect by Rossetti in the predella of The Blessed Damozel (1875-78; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass.). The painting apparently begun in 1881 must be the unfinished work, chiefly in bodycolor, now in the Tate Gallery, of which nothing more is heard. 5 It must have been for this that Burne-Jones had a model of the chariot constructed, in wood and metal, complete with a wax figure of Venus. 6 Only toward the end of his life did the possibility arise of turning the subject into a tapestry; the very last entry in his retrospec- tive list of work is: "Began design for the tapestry of the Passing of Venus, that the tradition of tapestry weaving at Merton Abbey might not be forgotten or cease." This, on which he was at work until the day of his death, June 16, 1898, is the bold design in bodycolor now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (cat. no. 100). Georgiana Burne-Jones recalled that while "looking at the cartoon one day he said that he was going to alter the figure of Venus, because it was rather small- er than that of the others; and when asked whether it was not right for her to be so, because she was somewhat further off than they, he answered: 1 don't want her to be. Besides, figures diminished by distance are a ? in tapestry. That dear Morris who was so rightly minded, as he always was, had a very true saying about it. He was fond of insisting that heads in decora- tion ought to be of exactly the same size, and go one just behind the other like shillings in a row.'" 7 A letter of June 30 from Philip Burne-Jones notified Henry Dearie, who had taken charge of the works after Morris's death, that he was "keeping back from the sale of my Father's works [the first studio sale at Christie's, July 16, 1898] the Tapestry design he was at work at up to within a short time of his death - which I believe you intended to work out in tapes- try ... if you have enough to go upon or if the design is sufficient for your purposes." 8 Dearie later wrote that Burne- Jones "had partly executed - about half finished - a small sketching cartoon of the figures when he died so that I had to complete the designs from this roughly executed design - everything in the tapestry is mine - the background, the fore- ground, the pattern on the draperies and all the details were designed by me." 9 There is an element of defensive exaggeration in this account, which occurred in correspondence with George Booth, a patron of the Detroit Institute of Arts, who commissioned a second weaving (cat. no. 101) in 1922. 10 A first version, woven between 1901 and 1907, was unfortunately destroyed by fire at the Brussels Exhibition of 1910; it had had a simpler border of acanthus leaves but lacked the inscription (from the old French Romaunt de la Rose), which Dearie sug- gested to Booth. 11 1. The entry "Triumph of Love for Tiles 2-0-0" appears in Burne-Jones's account book with Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., under 1861. The design, in pencil, crayon, and ink, is reproduced in Harrison and Waters 1973, fig. 59 (private collection), but no such tiles are known to have been executed. 2. Sotheby's Belgravia, November 20, 1973, lot 48, 22 Vi x 4^/2 in. (57 x 115. 5 cm). 3. Tate Gallery (N04638, A00061, A00062); Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (64-66'n). 4. "The design first made its appearance upon a fan in water-colour, and was not begun as a picture till 18 81" (Burne-Jones 1900, p. 164). 5. Tate Gallery, presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest, 1919 (N03453; 42 x 98 in. [106.9 x 249.4 cm]); Tate Gallery 1993, no. 63. 6. The model is reproduced in Burne-Jones 1900, p. 162. 7. Memorials, vol. II, p. 331. 8. Quoted in Parry 1983, p. 117. 9. Ibid, p. 118. 10. See Alan Phipps Darr, in Woven Splendor: Five Centuries of European Tapestry in the Detroit Institute of Arts (exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts, 1996), pp. 70-71. 11. The 1901-7 weaving was photographed in color and is reproduced in Parry 1983, p. 119.
The first production of this design was woven at the Merton Abbey looms from a cartoon designed over the period of years from 1861 to 1878. The piece was on the loom for several years and the weaving was finished in 1907. The original was shown at the Brussels Exhibition and was burned. At the request of Mr. George D. Booth of Detroit another weaving was made from this cartoon for the Detroit Institute of Arts and was completed in 1926. The new tapestry was woven by a disabled soldier, Percy Sheldrick, whose initials appear in the selvage,
