Silverpoint and white chalk on grey prepared paper, 19.5 by 23.5 cm (7 ¾ by 9 ¼ ins)

Provenance: from the artist to his granddaughter Angela Margaret Thirkell (née Angela Margaret Mackail); by descent to Graham Campbell McInnes (Graham Thirkell) then given to his son Simon McInnes in 1969

Exhibited: London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart., 1899, no. 204.; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa NGC (Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottawa MBAC) on loan in 1980 (Jones L-2.3)

The Passing of Venus was first conceived of by Burne-Jones as a design for a tile panel in 1861, but he returned to the subject on numerous occasions over the next four decades, culminating in a tapestry design for Morris & Co unfinished at his death in 1898 (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York hold a study for this (acc.62.167)). The present work is a direct study for the reclining figure of Venus in a version executed in c.1878 (offered for sale, Christie’s, 24 November 2004, lot 10). The drawing’s distinctive medium of silverpoint with white heightening on grey prepared-paper firmly attaches it to the artist’s so called Florentine period, when he was studying Italian drawings by artists of the Quattrocento, amongst them Filippino Lippi.