The Mirror of Venus
Not on view
Burne-Jones painted this subject for Grosvenor Gallery’s first exhibition, in 1877 (Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon), and his composition encapsulates the emerging Aesthetic style. Specific narrative is avoided, and the sweetly elegant girls—whose faces and forms pay tribute to Sandro Botticelli—convey a mood of dreamy melancholy. Gathered before a strange barren landscape, the maidens are entranced by a reflective pool—the mirror of the title—and in a lovely visual conceit, the flowered lawn in the foreground crowns their reflected heads. Etched with great delicacy by the French-trained, Polish-born Jaskinski, the print was published in London and Berlin, testifying to Burne-Jones’s international appeal.
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