St Dorothea; and St Barbara

These two figures, together with a third, St Agnes, appear in the fourth tier of the East window at All Saints Church, Cambridge, which was made by the Morris firm in 1866. The cartoons were entered in Burne-Jones's account book in August that year, priced at 4 guineas each (see A.C. Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle, vol. 2, 1975, pp. 41-2.) The three saints were subsequently repeated in a painting executed for Burne-Jones's patron, William Graham (sold Christie's, London, 22 November 2006, lot 230) and in individual panels given by Burne-Jones to Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle (see Christie's, London, 12 December 2019, lots 106 and 107).
Saint Barbara, a Syrian saint, is shown with her traditional emblem, the tower in which, according to the Golden Legend, she was imprisoned by her father to protect her from the attentions of importunate suitors. The three windows are those which, to his fury, she had inserted to symbolise the Holy Trinity. Saint Dorothea, a maiden of Caesarea in Cappodocia who suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian, holds the sword with which she was beheaded and is accompanied by an angel with a basket of flowers. This refers to the legend that on her way to execution the notary Theophilus mockingly asked her to send him roses from paradise; this she did, thus converting him to Christianity and causing him too to receive a martyr's crown. Burne-Jones also treated this subject in more narrative form in an important watercolour, now destroyed, which he exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1867.