Edward Burne-Jones: The Rose a Mythical Flower of Love and Death

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) like his fellows Pre-Raphaelite painters was fascinated with natural history. His quest for botanical accuracy is visualized in Green Summer(1864), Love among the Ruins (1870),Beguiling of Merlin (1874), and The Legend of the Briar Rose. (1890). Burne-Jones’s depiction of nature combines the natural or physical representation of recent scientific discoveries with metaphysical associations of philosophical and poetical conceits about love. For Burne-Jones, sweet briar roses became a complex symbol with idiosyncratic meanings. The rose is symbol of balance. The beautiful color of the flower contrasts with the foliage’s unique scent, a poetical allusion of spring as well as love. But the thorny branches of the rose are an ancient symbol for pain and pleasure. Burne-Jones played with this motif in his painting in order to capture the perplexity of love experienced in his life for his model Maria Cassavetti Zambaco (1843-1914), a beautiful Greek sculptress. However, he was also challenging the artistic superiority of painting over photography at that time.