Love Among the Ruins (oil on canvas)

The title of this painting is taken from Robert Browning’s poem of 1855. However, it is not a direct illustration of the text, but instead a rather more elusive allegory, typical of the artist. The setting was possibly influenced by a fifteenth century Venetian text called the ‘Hypnerotomachia Poliphili’. The romantic story was illustrated with woodcuts, some of which show lovers seated amongst fallen pillars and stones. The lover is believed to be Gaetano Meo or Alesaandro di Marco who were favourite models for artists in the late Victorian period. The female, although probably the model Antonia Caiva, alludes to Burne-Jones’s great love, Maria Zambaco, with whom he had a tumultuous affair twenty years previously. Burne-Jones had originally painted a watercolour-cum-gouache of this subject between 1870 and 1873. It became one of the artist’s most admired and exhibited works before it was damaged in a photographic studio in Paris in 1893 but recently came up for auction at Christie's, London on July 11th 2013 and sold for £13.2 million.