Ambition, Cupidite Et la boisieme Volupte Sans les saurs de la Destinee Apres la vingt-premiere annee Calendrier de la Vie, 1530 Burne-Jones has mis-quoted the verse at the heading of Rossetti's poem, it should read Ambition, Cupidite Et delicieuse Volupte, Sans les soeur de la destinee Apres la vingt-premiere annee Calendrier de la Vie, 1630 One of a series of femme fatales made at the time, the card-player at the centre of the composition derives from Rossetti and resembles Fanny Cornforth and Mary Bartley. Like many of his paintings of the early 1860s, there is as much activity in the background as in the foreground and the viewer is intrigued by the minute detail of a dormitory, servants drawing curtains and stairs that lead off. Other details continue the narrative for example, the card player rests her foot on the whippet ( a symbol of chastity) and the clock on the table points to 4 probably am, and the abandoned instruments suggest an earlier revelry. There are many similarities to Rossetti's Borgia family of 1851, purchased by G P Boyce, a friend of Burne-Jones in 1852 and exhibited at the Hogarth Club in 1859 which enabled Burne-Jones to have access to the watercolour from an early date.
Rossetti's poem The Card Dealer is given in the original version published in the Athenaeum, 23rd October 1852 p 1147 where it is entitled The Car- Dealer; or Vingt-et-un and said to have been inspired by a picture by Theodore Von Holst... Burne-Jones gives a slightly different version of the motto to that published, and changes the date of the "Calendrier de la Vie" for 1630 to 1530, perhaps by accident or perhaps to fit in better with the "Venetian" conception of the main design. The rules lines at the top of the following two pages were probably intended to have music added musical instruments occur in the lower right-hand corner of the main illustration, and Death plays music in the vignette on folio 16 recto. This design has many parallels in Burne-Jones's early work notably the pen drawing Ladies and Death of 1860 in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. The little sketch of a rose tree encircled by a malignant worm, like the "Dance of Death" design owes something to German prints, in this case the popular subject of The Fall. The theme of "The Rose and the Worm" is also treated by Ruskin in the penultimate chapter of the last volume of Modern Painters, published n 1860.