BURNE-JONES, Edward
(b. 1833, Birmingham, d. 1898, London)

The Mirror of Venus

1873-77
Oil on canvas, 120 x 200 cm
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon

A member of the pre-Raphaelite movement that was formed in England in 1848, Sir Edward Burne-Jones became one of the leading figures in a new trend, known as Aestheticism, that emerged in the 1860s.

About 1860, Burne-Jones turned to watercolour as his primary medium, and in 1864 he was elected an Associate of the Old Water-Colour Society (OWCS). This brought his work before a wide public for the first time. It was never popular with the more conservative members and was often savagely attacked in the press. For seven years after resigning from the OWCS, Burne-Jones hardly exhibited, but at the opening exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1877, he showed eight large works. They included The Beguiling of Merlin (1873-77; Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), The Mirror of Venus (1873-77; Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon), and The Days of Creation (1871-76; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge). This dramatic revelation of his mature powers established him overnight as the star of the Grosvenor, a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement and one of the leading artists of the day.

The Mirror of Venus can be seen as an exaltation of ideal beauty, aligning the atmosphere of the painting with a perspective shared by late Victorian art. The painter employs a minimum of narrative elements, creating a linear arrangement of poetic and oneiric figures clad in pseudo-classical clothing in the manner of a Greek-inspired frieze. Rather than aiming for a formal stylistic resemblance, Burne-Jones seeks to create a general affinity with a Renaissance atmosphere. In a manner suggestive of the Quattrocento, and Botticelli in particular, the work gives precedence to the decorative harmony of the whole and deliberately evokes a sense of nostalgia for the past.

Like The Bath of Venus, which also belongs to the Gulbenkian Collection, the composition derives from an illustration intended for The Hill of Venus, part of William Morris's poem The Earthly Paradise, which was inspired by the medieval legend of Tannhäuser.




© Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Krén and Daniel Marx.