THE PERSEUS SERIES
PERSEUS & THE GRAIAE (1877)
† NCM 1900- 664-8
The first task for Perseus was to find the Graiae and ask them where he could find the Nymphs who kept the items he needed to defeat Medusa, a Gorgon with snakes in her hair and whose stare turned men into stone. The Graiae were sisters of the Gorgons, who lived in darkness near the end of the earth. Between them, they had only one eye and one tooth that they shared. When they refused Perseus's request he took the eye and forced them to give him an answer. Burne-Jones shows Perseus holding the eye while the Graiae, portrayed in classical dress, grope in blindness.
In 1875 the politician Lord Arthur Balfour commissioned Burne-Jones to create a series of paintings for the music room of his London home. BurneJones’s work was often inspired by mythology and legend and presented an imaginary world focused on beauty of form and spirit. A re-telling of the Greek myth of Perseus in William Morris’s poem ‘The Earthly Paradise’ provided the subject. Burne-Jones worked on the project for ten years but it was never completed.
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