The treatment of this most un-English, vigorous and exciting oil sketch on panel is datable to the 1860s. Two women are front-of-stage in a surreal landscape; one weaves a garland of leaves, while the other plays a lute. From about 1856, Burne-Jones had been led to early Italian painting by John Ruskin, and independently by his patron William Graham. He travelled to Italy in 1859 and 1862, undertaking copies at the instruction of Ruskin. In England he was shown works by Carpaccio, Mantegna and Bellini, and he began to grow beyond the influence of Rossetti. Throughout his life, Burne-Jones maintained an extensive collection of photographs of Old Master paintings, which he used as source material like the ‘model books’ of the early Italian painting workshops. The strange, austere landscape in the background of our painting echoes that in Giovanni Bellini’s Agony in the Garden, which had been acquired by the National Gallery in 1863 and was there for all to see. Its intense colour is Venetian in character. In the last year of his life Burne-Jones wrote to Lady Lewis, who was in Venice: ‘whenever you see Bellini, give him my adoration, for none is like him – John, that is, for his brother I only respect.’ (Memorials, vol 2, p 335)