One of a number of studies in Birmingham's collection related to an unrealised composition called 'The Fates', which Burne-Jones worked on in 1865.

This early design for depicts 'the Fates, or Parcae, of Greek myth, hierartically seated behind the figures of two lovers, whose lives they symbolically determine. Clotho, youngest of the sisters, presides over the moment of human birth...; Lachesis, who spins out the events and actions of life; and Atropos, the eldest of the three, cuts the vital thread with a pair of scissors' (Stephen Wildman).

On the verso is a study of St Dorothea for 'Theophilus and the Angel' also never completed.