The Passing of Venus

The Passing of Venus

Sir Edward Burne-Jones

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overwhelming passion was a constant theme in Burne-Jones’s art. He was working on this study for a Morris & Company tapestry showing Venus’ conquest when he died in 1898. Although preliminary, the intricate composition is clearly established: the goddess enters at left in a winged chariot while Cupid prepares the way. As women fall before him, he fits an arrow for the next victim among a crowd of nervous beauties. Burne-Jones invented the motif, drawing on medieval poetry and Renaissance allegories of the triumph of love, for his personal homage to the irresistible power of desire. The design was used by Merton Abbey Tapestry Works to weave two tapestries, in 1908 and 1922. The first was destroyed by fire and the second is now at the Detroit Institute of Arts.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.