Studies of angels

The drawings are studies for the figures of Angeli Laudantes, designed in 1878 for a window by Morris and Co. in the south choir aisle in Salisbury Cathedral. The window consists of two lights, the other showing Angeli Ministrantes. Burne-Jones charged £20 for each figure, and described them half jokingly in his account book as 'colossal and sublime'. They are indeed among his noblest creations. The full-scale cartoons, worked up in coloured chalks, are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and the designs were later used for tapestries, also made by the Morris firm.