Laus Veneris - Handgemalte Reproduktion

A German legend relates how Tannhauser, the poet and wandering knight, discovered the Venusberg, the subterranean home of Venus, goddess ot love, and spent a year there with her. Released and iilled with remorse for his sinful behaviour, he travelled to Rome to seek absolution from Pope Urban, who told him that forgiveness would be as impossible as that his papal staff should blossom. Tannhauser returned to Venus and three days' later the Pope's staff miraculously flowered. During the Romantic period, numerous German writers produced versions of the Tannhauser story, many ol which were translated into English, the best-known appearing in Thomas Carlyle's German Romance of 1827. Later, William Morris retold the legend as 'The Hill of Venus' in his The Earthly Paradise (1868???‚¬???70). Two other versions had appeared in 1861 when Burne-Jones himself first tackled the subject as a watercolour that was acquired by his patron, William Graham, who was to commission the larger oil painting. This was started in 1873, finished five years later and shown at the second Grosvenor Gallery exhibition. The critical response was generally favourable, F. G. Stephens in the Athenaeum declaring it 'the finest work he has achieved' and a source of 'unending pleasure1 - but it was also attacked as an example of all that was held by some to be despised in the Aesthetic Movement: the peacock feathers on the floor alone would have been sufficient to identify its dubious 'aesthetic tendencies'. Algernon Swinburne produced a poem with the same title, which similarly explored the theme, of the destructive power of love, publishing it in Poems and Ballads, which he dedicated to Burne-Iones, in 1866. A mutual influence has been suggested: Swinburne probably saw the watercolour version before writing the poem, while Burne-Jones, having read the poem, incorporated many of its images into his painting. Certain phrases in it replicate poetically the mood Burne-jones conjures up on canvas, including its almost claustrophobic atmosphere and the predominant use of red tones: 'Her little chambers drip with flower-like red', in Swinburne's verse. Further contemporary influences that have been proposed include Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mai (1857) and Wagner's Tannhauser, performed in Paris in March 1861 and at the Royal Opera House in 1876. Both Swinburne and Burne-Jones were admirers oi Wagner, and in 1863 Baudelaire sent Swinburne his pamphlet, Richard Wagner et Tannhauser a Paris.

W. Graham Robertson saw Laus Veneris as resembling 'clusters of many-coloured gems or stained windows through which shone the evening sun', and in a letter describing the Burne-Jones centenary exhibition of 1933 asked a friend, 'I wonder which you consider his best picture? I should vote ior Lam Veneris... a lovely, glowing thing - as fresh and brilliant as ever after all the years.' Robertson's opinion is widely shared, and the work is regarded as the finest example of Burne-Jones's skill in composition and use oi surface pattern. It resembles a tapestry with exceptionally rich textures, that of the dress of Venus being achieved by stippling with a circular punch in the underpaint before the colour was added. The vivid contrast the painting must have made against the green walls of the Grosvenor Gallery, where it was first exhibited, can only be imagined. The actual tapestry on the right of the painting depicts Venus in a chariot and was created in 1861 as a design for tiles and in 1898 adapted as a tapestry made by William Morris's company.