The Annunciation was often treated by Burne-Jones, as a subject for both easel paintings and decorative designs for stained glass, tiles, and mosaic. It embodied the picturesque aspect of the Christian religion — what he called "Christmas Carol Christianity" — that appealed to him so strongly, and he interpreted it in a wide variety of forms. 1 An altarpiece of i860 (cat. no. 10) glows with the inner light of its gold ground and betrays the experience of copying Simone Martini's well- known version of the theme (1333; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) the previous year. A watercolor of 1863 (cat. no. 27), partly inspired by Carpaccio's Dream of Saint Ursula (1495; Accademia, Venice), pushes Pre-Raphaelite quaintness and eccentricity to the utmost limit. The present painting, com- pleted sixteen years later, goes to the opposite extreme, and is the artist s most solemn and severe account of the subject. The Virgin is shown as Saint Luke describes her, "troubled" at the angel s awesome message, to which she will soon respond in the sonorous words of the Magnificat. That Burne-Jones had sketched a detail from Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat (1483; Galleria degli Uffizi) in 1859 is perhaps significant. 2 Certainly it is impossible to believe that he had not read Walter Pater's essay on the master, published in the Fortnightly Review in August 1870, in which the writer describes his hero's Madonnas as "dejected" by the "intolerable honour" of their destiny and "saddened perpetually by the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink." 3 To emphasize the portentousness of the event and the weight of the burden that the Virgin accepts, Burne-Jones introduces reliefs of the Fall of Man and the Expulsion from Eden on the frieze above her head. The picture was "designed and begun" in 1876, worked on in 1878, and finished in May 1879. It was then sent immediately to the Grosvenor Gallery, together with the Pygmalion series (cat. nos. 87a~d). The stylistic tendency of this group of works was very different from that of the two richly colored and romantic pictures he had shown the previous year, Laus Veneris (cat. no. 63) and Le Chant d Amour (cat. no. 84). A colder, more academic and intellectual note is struck, while the glowing col- ors have given way to pale, chalky tones in the Pygmalion paintings and a somber, almost monochromatic palette in The Annunciation. The change is not really surprising. Whereas the two exhibits of 1878 had their origin in watercolors painted at the height of the artist s Venetian phase in the early 1860s, the paintings shown in 1879 express the more Florentine impulse that had come to the fore later that decade and achieved maximum intensity in the wake of his visits to Italy in 1871 and 1873. The Annunciation was designed well after those formative journeys. The model for the head of the Virgin was Julia Jackson (1846-1895), the daughter of one of the cele- brated Pattle sisters and the mother of Virginia Woolf and the artist Vanessa Bell. 4 She was a renowned beau- ty who often sat to the artists in the Little Holland House circle — G. F. Watts, her cousin Val Prinsep, and their aunt the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, after whom she was named. Burne-Jones had probably known her, since he had stayed at Little Holland House, recovering from nervous prostration and receiv- ing discreet tutelage from Watts, in 1858. In 1878 she had married, as her second husband, Leslie Stephen, the man of letters and leading agnostic who edited the Cornhill Magazine and later established the Dictionary of National Biography. Their daughter Vanessa was born May 30, 1879, and Penelope Fitzgerald describes Julia as appearing in The Annunciation "in all the grave beauty of early pregnancy." 5 It is an appealing idea, but we do not know exactly when she posed during the three years that the picture was on the easel. Besides, Julia may not have been the only model. The Virgins head has a distinct look of Georgie Burne- Jones, and she could well have influenced the concep- tion. Just as Maria Zambaco, Burne-Jones s mistress, almost certainly posed for the head of Galatea, symbol of artistic inspiration, in the Pygmalion series, so the high-minded and morally courageous Georgie was a natural model for this supreme image of female virtue. The Grosvenor exhibition of 1879 was the third at which Burne-Jones had asserted his claim to be the cynosure and talking point of the show. He was still capable of making hackles rise, but was gradually gain- ing acceptance. The Illustrated London News took the old line, claiming, "As regards the Annunciation ... for an artist of our day to pretend to be inspired by the ignorant pictures and to see with the untaught eyes of the painters of the fourteenth or the fifteenth century, is too absurd to bear reflection." 6 The Builder, too, was dismissive: "Of Mr. Jones's . . . painting of 'The Annunciation we can only say that we cannot under- stand the motive for painting it." 7 The Times, on the other hand, thought the picture 4 a very fine example of its school — the revived Renaissance," 8 the Portfolio described it as "delightful," 9 and F. G. Stephens believed that it was "by far the most complete picture our artist has produced; the execution is more search- ing, the finish more thorough, the design has been more effectually carried out than in any former work of his." 10 Henry James was not so illuminating as usual; he thought Burne-Jones made "a less striking appearance" than in previ- ous years, but that the pictures had "as much as ever the great merit . . . of having a great charm/' 11 Oscar Wilde pondered, a little fruitlessly, on how differently the subject would have been treated by Fra Angelico. 12 A full-scale version (Castle Museum, Norwich), worked in bodycolor on the original cartoon, was painted in 1887 for Cyril Flower, Lord Battersea, possibly as a pendant to The Golden Stairs (cat. no. 109), which he already owned. It differs in a number of details, and the head of the Virgin is a likeness of the artist's daughter, Margaret. There is also a small, undated version, with a much simplified background (British Museum, London). 13 An engraving of the oil by Felix Jasinski was pub- lished in 1897. [jc] 1. For a comprehensive list, see Lady Lever Art Gallery collection 1994, pp. 12, 14 n. 10. 2. Both this copy and that after Simone Martini s Annunciation are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 3. Fortnightly Review, August 14, 1870, pp. 157-58. 4. Sketches in sketchbook 962, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 5. Fitzgerald 1975, p. 179. 6. Illustrated London News, May 3, 1879, p. 415. 7. Builder 37 (May 3, 1879), p. 481. 8. Times (London), May 2, 1879, p. 3. 9. Portfolio, 1879, p. 127. 10. Athenaeum, May 3, 1879, p. 575. 11. James 1956, p. 182. 12. Robert Ross, ed., Works of Oscar Wilde (London, 1909-), vol. 15, Miscellanies, p. 25. 13. British Museum collection 1994, p. 98, no. 70, illus.
Fitzwilliam work list: 1876 ... designed and began the large Annunciation - about 9ft x 4 1878... worked on the Annuncation .. 1879 Began to work again on the Annunciation finished it by May - The Lady Lever Art Gallery exhibition of 1948 states that the painting was made for William Eight Earl of Carlisle, clergyman and peer. George Howard's Uncle. Pencil sketches in the Fitzwilliam Museum collection give a key to the development of the design from the earlier 1862 Annumciation ( see Harrison and Waters 1973 fig 186). As a reminder to the viewer of the purpose of the Annunciation the Temptation and Expulsion are referred to above the archway, as the antecedent reasons for the fall of mankind, which the Annunciation redeems The two reliefs above the arch relate to the stained glass predellas of The Annunciation and The Expulsion for Lamerton Church that were designed concurrently (see images above from Hollyer photographs of the cartoons made at the request of Morris & Co. ( Private Collection)) The church burned down in the same year that they were installed November 1877. The inscription appearing as though behind The Expulsion, is from Genesis 3: 17 maledicta terra in opere tuo cursed is the earth in thy work On the opposite side of the arch is an image of the tempter in the form of serpentine woman holding the apple. Burne Jones returned to this specific subject again in the late 1890s for illustration to J W MacKail's Biblia Illocentium which was to have been produced by the Kelmscott Press. The project was abandoned after death of William Morris. The artist had been so impressed by the streets and architecture of Sienna on his fourth Italian visit in 1873, that they became the recurring backdrops in subsequent paintings and they replace the previous generalised architectural settings e.g. the backgrounds in the Pygmalion Series. MacCarthy suggests that there may be a romantic significance for the artist in the continual references to the streets of Sienna. Her suggestion is that there was a meeting between Fairfax Murray, Maria Zambaco and the artist there in 1873. An unfinished design "Blind Love" of a nude male walking in a Sienese style street knocking at at door may have implications of this kind.