'The Legend of Briar Rose'

The Legend of Briar Rose is a series of paintings by Edward Burne-Jones (exhibited in 1890) that evoke the Sleeping Beauty legend. Here are three of the four, showing the briar rose overwhelming everything. The painting above shows Sleeping Beauty herself. The second shows a knight who has fought his way into the enchanted forest, and look at what he finds. The third shows some of the sleeping inhabitants of the castle.

The beauty of Disney's Beauty & the Beast is that it is Belle who rescues Beast. Nonetheless, all the great Victorian images of Sleeping Beauty remind me of civilians who have been slaughtered in war. Only sleeping...

Below are two images that reinterpreted the legend. The first is by Russian painter and scene designer Léon Bakst. He worked on it from 1913-1922. The second is from Disney's Sleeping Beauty which influenced game design in Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda.

Links:
Tchaikovsky's famed ballet premiered the same year as Burne-Jones' series: 1890.
A Russian Sleeping Beauty painting here
Another Burne-Jones painting here
The Woman in the Bower legend here