“Days of Creation” of Sir Edward Burne-Jones — Iconographic Sources and Individual Reading

Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) is an English artist, the leader of the “second wave” of Pre-Raphaelitism. He is called an “artist-critic” because while working on his own pieces he consciously included quotes and allusions to the monuments of various masters and epochs that were copied into his album during his travels in France and Italy or were seen by him on display at the British Museum and the National Gallery in London. This paper is devoted to the study and classification of types of visual borrowings which the master resorted to while creating the “Days of Creation” (1872-1876) by analogy with the existing classification of citation methods during iconographic analysis of the monuments of fine art of the Middle Ages. In the process of our work, a comparative analysis of the biblical text on the Creation of the world and six panels of the cycle was carried out, as well as the works of an English artist using the same plot that were considered earlier in the series under study. As a result of the research the iconographic origins of the examined cycle were described, the circle of objects of art used by the artist while creating paintings, and methods of citing them were identified. A classification was also made of the sources of these borrowings: from the general structure of the composition to individual attributes and the interpretation of a figure or part of a figure, which became the experience of “reconstruction” of the author’s creative method and made it possible to bring it closer to the method of work of the late medieval master.