BURNES-JONES, EDWARD. – Painter and decorator, born in Birmingham in 1833, died in London in 1898. He abandoned ecclesiastical studies to devote himself to painting, following the enthusiasm aroused in him by the paintings of D. G. ROSSETTI, CARLO (v.). Although professing the theoretical principles of Pre-Raphaelitism (v.), he belongs to a later period; in fact, he began to work when the original Pre-Raphaelite association had already been dissolved. At first he was a faithful imitator of the master; subsequently, under Ruskin’s guidance, he made two journeys to Italy (1859 and 1862), where he was able to become directly acquainted with the works of the Italian quattrocento painters and to experience especially the influence of Botticelli and Mantegna, which decisively contributed to the formation of the most original aspect of his style.
Besides subjects drawn from medieval legends or of a mystical-religious character, always marred by the literary taste proper to his school (The Merciful Knight, Elijah in the Desert, etc.), he also treated mythological subjects derived especially from the Odyssey (Circe’s Cup, etc.), for which he found greater freedom of expression and a warmer colouring. His best works (The Golden Stairs, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, Sponsa de Libano) reveal his qualities as a refined colourist and a free and pleasing composer, although he was never able to free himself from an external and mannered formal stylisation: his figures, with their sharply defined contours, seem to be inspired by a single model and all assume the same sinuous poses. Owing to this tendency towards the ornamental, he achieved greater coherence in his decorative works: stained-glass windows (e.g., Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel in the chapel of Bradfield College), mosaics (e.g., in the Protestant church of S. Paolo in Rome), tapestries (e.g., The Star of Bethlehem at Exeter College in Oxford), wood engravings, book illustrations, etc.; works which he executed for the firm of W. Morris.