FAMAG 1923.19


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Nineteenth-century British Renaissance Revival cassetta frame with embellished entablature and small plinth in aedicular style; the frieze ornamented with a shallow applied composition candelabrum decoration springing from urns in the bottom corners, centred at top and bottom with floral motifs; gilded.

About this work


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Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley ARA OWS (1833-1898): Study for The Car of Love, charcoal on paper adhered to canvas, 162 x 89 cms. Presented to the Corporation of Falmouth in 1923 by Alfred A. De Pass, in memory of his sons.


More information about the frame

The aedicular frame (made in the form of a Classical temple) was revived in the nineteenth century by, for instance, William Holman Hunt, and this may have inspired Burne-Jones - who had visited Italy in 1861 - to look back to the great aedicular altarpiece frames he had seen, such as that on Mantegna?s altarpiece in San Zeno, Verona. From about 1870 he modelled most of his own frames on Renaissance patterns, designing his first true aedicular frame for a set of six watercolours, The Days of Creation (1872-76). Burne-Jones was so concerned about the integrity of The Days of Creation as a single work of art that he wrote by hand on the back of each panel: ?This picture is not complete by itself but is No. X of a series of six water colour pictures representing the Days of Creation which are placed in a frame designed by the Painter, from which he desires they may not be removed.?

The design used for the frame on The Car of Love is a hybrid between a true aedicular frame with lateral pilasters, plinth and entablature, and a Renaissance cassetta frame, with a continuous decorated frieze running around all four rails. This hybrid form adds a small entablature and sometimes plinth to the cassetta frame, imitating the original hybrid patterns used in Renaissance Italy for small devotional pictures. Burne-Jones used a weightier version, with an additional outer egg-&-dart moulding, for full-scale finished works, such as The Tree of Forgiveness, 1881-82 (Lady Lever Art Gallery).