The Merciful Knight

Edward Burne-Jones was 30 and still finding his way in 1863 when he painted this in gouache, under the spell of the medieval legend he and William Morris shared. The scene comes from a story of the Florentine knight Giovanni Gualberto, who caught the man who had killed his brother and, because it was Good Friday, forgave him rather than take his revenge. Afterwards, the legend says, a wooden figure of Christ on a roadside shrine bent down and kissed him in thanks. Burne-Jones sets it in a cramped, ivy-choked oratory, the armoured knight sinking under the embrace. He wrote the tale out on the frame so viewers could follow it. His earliest sketches made the kiss far more charged than the quiet one he finally chose.