Designed the story of Orpheus" is one of the many entries for the immensely productive year of 1872, in Burne- Jones s retrospective record of work. Conceived as illustrations to The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice, a poem by William Morris that remained unpublished in his lifetime, 1 these were refined into a sequence of eleven bold but exquisite pencil drawings, all bearing the date 1875 (and all now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Their roundel format suggests that the artist had in mind a future application for the designs, and he was given the opportunity in 1879, when William Graham commissioned a decorated grand piano for his daughter Frances. Burne-Jones had been interested in the design and decora- tion of pianos from an early date and had become dissatisfied with the heavy, bulbous shape of the standard grand, design- ing one for himself in 1878, with the help of William Benson. This had the simpler, squarer lines of a harpsichord (which he also owned), with plain straight legs and a case stained green. 2 "I have been wanting for years to reform pianos," he wrote to Kate Faulkner, "since they are as it were the very altar of homes, and a second hearth to people." "I feel as if one might start a new industry in painting them," he continued, ". . . [and] I should like Broadwood to be venturesome and have a few of the better shape made on speculation, some only stained, not always green, sometimes other colours, and then a few with here and there an ornament well designed and painted, and at least one covered with ornament, and presently we should see if people would have them or not." 3 The successful public exhibition of the Graham piano, both in their warehouse in 1880 and at the International Inventions Exhibition of 1885, led Broadwoods to produce a number of grand pianos with allover naturalistic decoration in gold and silver gesso, carried out by Kate Faulkner to Burne-Jones's designs. 4 With the exception of the much simpler case for an Arnold Dolmetsch clavichord, painted in 1897, 5 the Graham piano is Burne-Joness most elaborate exercise in decorative painting, evoking the luxurious self-indulgence of late Renaissance and Mannerist applied art — appropriate enough as a commission from a connoisseur and collector of Italian Old Masters. On the outside of the lid is the seated figure of a poet, looking up through branches of laurel to his female muse, who delivers a scroll inscribed "ne oublie" [do not forget — the Graham family motto]; a cartouche carries a thirteenth- century Italian poem of the Dolce Stil Nuovo school, attributed to Guido Cavalcanti, beginning: "Fresca rosa novella / piacente primavera / per prata e per rivera / gaiamente cantando, / vostro fin pregio mando a la verdura [Fresh new rose, delighting Spring, gaily singing by meadow and bank, I declare your rare gifts to the greenery]." 6 Inside is one of the most colorful and extraordi- nary of all Burne-Jones's decorations, a seated figure of Mother Earth (inscribed "Terra Omniparens") surrounded by twenty- one chubby putti (three of them naughty imps, with pointed ears) playing among the swirling tendrils of an enormous vine interspersed with briars; a large preparatory chalk cartoon for this is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 7 In a delightful additional touch that shows the artist's infinite capacity for taking pains, flower petals are painted on the sounding board beneath the strings. Against these images of inspiration and fecundity, the Orpheus roundels seem a little somber, painted in grisaille over green staining. That Burne-Jones went to some trouble, how- ever, to dispose them carefully is demonstrated in a sketch- book, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, containing first proposals for their arrangement, which were later revised. 8 The story is of Orpheus, son of the muse Calliope, and his doomed attempt to recover his dead bride, Eurydice. Having charmed Pluto, god of the underworld, by his playing of the lyre, he is granted her return to life provided he does not look back before leaving the infernal regions, a command he fails to obey, losing her forever. Beginning at the end of the straight back panel, the subjects are of Orpheus and Eurydice together {The Garden)', Eurydice 's death by snakebite {The Garden Poisoned, cat. no. 126); The Gate of He/I; and the three- headed guard dog, Cerberus {The Doorkeeper, cat. no. 127). Over the keyboard are twin images of Orpheus and Eurydice {Across the Flames), and on the right-hand end is the larger scene of Orpheus playing to Pluto and Persephone ( The House of Pluto, cat. no. 128). Then come three images of Orpheus leading Eurydice away, called The Regained Lost: as he looks behind, she slips away from his grasp, back into death. The rear end of the case, The Death of Orpheus, which also bears inscriptions, shows Orpheus slain by the women of Thrace. There exist a num- ber of preparatory studies for the roundels, including a pen- cil design for The House of Pluto (Tate Gallery, London) and a chalk drawing for The Death of Orpheus (Royal Watercolour Society, London). 1. The poem was eventually published in May Morris's edition of The Collected Works of William Morris, 24 vols. (London, 1910-15), vol. 24 2. See Wilson 1972, pp. 140-46, and Wilson 1975. 3. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 111. 4. One of these pianos is in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (reproduced in Wilson 1972, fig. 15); another, in silver and gold, belongs to the Victoria and Albert Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum 1996, no.J.31). 5. The clavichord paintings are reproduced in Vallance 1900, p. 24. 6. Translation by George R. Kay, The Penguin Book of Italian Verse (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 58. 7. Victoria and Albert Museum, E. 690-1896, reproduced in Wilson 1972, 8. The relevant page of the sketchbook (E.7-1955), which includes other studies for the piano's decoration, is reproduced in ibid., fig. 1