With its pair, The Entombment, this is a design for a mon- ument in Lanercost Priory, Cumbria, commissioned by George Howard in 1879. Commemorating George s par- ents, the Hon. Charles Howard (see cat. no. 131) and his wife, Mary, it was executed in bronze relief by the sculptor Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm (1834-1890), who also translated Burne- Jones's design of Flodden Field (cat. no. 132). The composition is restrained and elegiac, appropriate in that Mary Howard had died giving birth to her son in 1843. "If ever my eyes grow dim," Burne-Jones once said, "I will give up painting and take to sculpture." 1 This deceptively sim- ple design demonstrates his understanding of the sculptural need to maintain strongly flowing forms; the subtly balanced highlights indicate the chief raised parts of the relief. The artist's bold application of bodycolor and use of a startlingly effective harmony of green and gold constitute a dissociation from simple two-dimensional design toward a kind of decora- tive art in which he uniquely and instinctively excelled. 1. Noted by Lady Lewis, and quoted by John Christian in Matthiesen Gallery 1991-92, p. 77.