Ruth H. Smith, ‘Inside-Out: The Sensory Bodies of Perseus and the Graiae by Edward Burne-Jones’, Immediations, (2019).
Perseus and the Graiae was to be the pivotal scene of Edward Burne-Jones’s Perseus Series. As such, several versions created between 1875-1892 exist in the form of preparatory cartoons, a gilded low-relief oak panel (Burne-Jones’s original intention for the piece), and an oil-painted version created after the original oak panel was unfavourably received. The subject, in which the hero steals the only eye of the Graiae sisters, clearly references themes of sight and blindness. However, contrary to the tendency in previous scholarship to relate this to concepts such as wisdom and spiritual insight, this article proposes that a more literal reading of the body and the senses in relation to the Graiae sisters is appropriate. Furthermore, I suggest that the sensory body was a central line of enquiry in Burne-Jones’s artistic project. Drawing from the psycho-physiological writings of George Henry Lewes on muscular sensation and Walter Pater’s concept of the ‘Diaphaneitè’, I argue that Burne-Jones’s depiction of the sightless Graiae emphasises other, non-visual forms of sensation, especially touch. This draws the viewer’s attention to the Graiae’s heightened haptic sensitivity to their environment, offering us a glimpse of the process of detecting one’s surroundings without sight. Adolf von Hildebrand’s writings on ‘visual’ and ‘kinaesthetic’ looking provide a useful framework for elucidating and dissecting the different mechanisms of sight represented at work in the scene.