Flower of God 1905

Edward Burne-Jones’s delicate ‘Flower of God’ seems to emerge from a dream, its powdery blues and yellows applied in thin, deliberate strokes. I can imagine Burne-Jones carefully layering washes of color, searching for a balance between representation and ethereal beauty. Look how the angel offers the lily, its stem a slender bridge between the figures. Maybe Burne-Jones was thinking about how the act of giving, of offering beauty, can connect the earthly and the divine. It reminds me of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s works, with its blend of romanticism and symbolism. You know, artists are always riffing off each other, consciously or not! Painting is like that, an ongoing conversation across time. It is an act of embodied expression, embracing uncertainty and allowing for multiple interpretations. Like a flower, it blooms in different ways for each viewer.