The Tiburtine Sibyl

Edward Burne-Jones

Date: 1875 

Materials: Pencil, black chalk and pastel, with gold paint

Astonishing Productivity

Burne-Jones's productivity in designs for stained glass is astonishing. It has beencalculated that between 1872 and 1878 - when he was occupied with many majorpaintings - he made more than 270 cartoons for the Morris firm, an average of nearly forty a year. From 1875 he was its sole designer of figure subjects, after Morris re-constituted the business as Morris & Co., severing connections with Ford Madox Brown and Rossetti.

New designs

Between 1872 and 1877 Burne-Jones produced fifty-five entirely new designs for one scheme alone, the eleven windows in the chapel at Jesus College, Cambridge.  

Four of these windows contained the Evangelists, flanked by Sibyls - the classical prophetesses adopted into Christian iconography and most famously treated by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel (which Burne-Jones had visited in 1871).

This 'cartoon' is a piece of draughts-manship taken far further than was necessary for the glass painter, but Burne- Jones was often carried away into elaborating a good design that could be used for another purpose: 'The Tiburtine Sibyl' was turned into a watercolour in 1877.