A study of a nude male seen from behind looking upwards to the left, with hands together for 'The Temple of Love'

This striking drawing of a nude male, seen from behind, relates to the figure in the lower right quadrant of Burne-Jones' painting 'The Temple of Love' in the Tate, London (inv. N03452). The oil was started in 1868 though not completed by the artist and shows one of the artists' earliest depictions of marriage; he paints a young couple standing before an altar as the goddess of love kneels down to bless them. Unusually, both the study and the final composition are depicted as nude figures. Typically, Burne-Jones would sketch nude studies, before clothing them in his final composition. See, for example, his treatment of a Gorgon in The Finding of Medusa, 1876 (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart), where he paints the crouched figure in drapery, and yet, in a preparatory drawing, studies the figure in the nude (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; see C. Conrad & A. Zettel, Edward Burne-Jones The Earthly Paradise, Ostfildern, 2009, no. 85 & 86)

Dated 1897, the second drawing may relate to Burne-Jones' preparatory work for The Mirror of Venus, 1898 (The Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, inv. 273) - with the artist appearing to study the mechanics of drawing a reflection of a face.