STUTTGART.- Since 1971, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart has been in the possession of a chief work of Pre-Raphaelite painting: Perseus, a cycle consisting of eight paintings and studies by Edward Burne-Jones. This is the most important Burne-Jones collection in Germany is to be found here in the Staatsgalerie: in addition to the Perseus Cycle, the museum also holds nine of the master's drawings in its Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs. These holdings serve as the point of departure for the first monographic exhibition on Burne-Jones to be presented in Germany, scheduled to open on 24 October, 2009.

In addition to the Perseus series, the show will also focus on Burne-Jones's other major narrative cycles, for example his large-scale Briar Rose works with their references to Art Nouveau ornamentation, or the tapestries devoted to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Myths, legends and sagas come to life in the works of the great Victorian painter, which usher the beholder into a silent world fall of beauty and harmony, but also informed by undercurrents of terror and danger. The exhibition will moreover encompass a number of other important pictorial narratives to be presented to the German public for the first time. The large-scale cycle on Cupid and Psyche, for example, executed in collaboration with Walter Crane, once again interprets antiquity as envisioned by William Morris.

The show's title alludes to one of the most important literary sources from which Burne Jones drew the inspiration for his narrative cycles: William Morris's best selling Earthly Paradise, the first edition of which appeared in 1868. At the same time, it also characterizes one of the painter's primary conceptual concerns, for his entire oeuvre can be understood as an idealistic alternative to the prosaic everyday life of the Late Victorian period - shaped, as it was, by the impact of the industrial revolution. The combination of classical material with medieval narrative forms comes very close to Burne-Jones's personal conception of an ideal age, i.e. of just such an "earthly paradise". In his art, he also interwove inspirations from the Early and High Renaissance with set-pieces from visions of the Middle Ages. He bathed the fascinating world of classical antiquity - so often characterized by drastic eroticism, tragedy and brutality - in the mild light of a solemn age shaped by Christian ideals. In his painted cycles, the one-time Oxford theology student Burne-Jones consistently depicted the human being on a kind of pilgrimage, the various stages of which already allude to the sublimation awaiting the traveller at the end of his road.

The spacious new exhibition areas on the ground floor of the museum provide us with a means of introducing Burne-Jones as a designer of interiors. Hence it is possible for us to show that the specific atmosphere he created with his tapestries and paintings - many of which are monumental in scale - was just as important an artistic aim for him as the content of the pictorial narrative. The visitor is accordingly to be given the opportunity to experience a number of different spatial settings. In addition to the artworks, the interiors will also comprise selected pieces of furniture and arts-and-crafts objects as well as stained-glass windows, book illustrations and sculptural works. The idea of a living environment shaped by art - later further developed in Stuttgart in the work of Oskar Schlemmer and the interior designs of the Weissenhof Estate - is to be placed in the limelight by this show as a farsighted element in the art of Edward Burne-Jones.