Laus Veneris, 1868 Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Sir Edward Burne-Jones also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting Laus Veneris is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

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.