Hero

Hero, painted in 1900 and among the last works of Burne-Jones's career (he died in 1898, making the 1900 date possibly posthumous or a completion date), depicts the figure from the classical myth of Hero and Leander — the priestess of Aphrodite whose lover Leander swam the Hellespont nightly to visit her, guided by a lamp she held aloft, until one stormy night the lamp was extinguished and Leander drowned. Hero is thus a figure of passionate devotion shadowed by disaster, and Burne-Jones's sympathy for precisely this kind of mythological role is evident throughout his career. The subject of a woman waiting, holding light against the darkness, for a lover who may or may not return, is among the most characteristic preoccupations of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition.

Oil on canvas with the cool, silvery palette characteristic of Burne-Jones's very late work. The figure holding a lamp creates a natural focal point for warm light within a generally cool tonality — a pictorial strategy that concentrates the viewer's attention on the act of waiting and hoping.