King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid

The story is an old English ballad, retold in a short poem by Tennyson. A king named Cophetua, who had never cared for any woman, sees a beggar girl in the street and falls for her on the spot, giving up everything for her. Burne-Jones spent about four years on it in the early 1880s. He puts the king below the girl, seated on the steps with his crown in his hands, gazing up at her while she sits above him in plain grey, holding a few flowers. Everything is armour, gold and deep colour, worked to a hard metallic shine. When it was shown in Paris in 1889 it made him famous across France and earned him the Legion of Honour, the country's national order of merit.