Axel Herman Haig RE was a Swedish-born artist, illustrator and architect. His paintings, illustrations and etchings, undertaken for himself and on behalf of many of the foremost architects of the Victorian period made him "the Piranesi of the Gothic Revival."

William Burges was an English architect and designer. Among the greatest of the Victorian art-architects, he sought in his work to escape from both nineteenth-century industrialisation and the Neoclassical architectural style and re-establish the architectural and social values of a utopian medieval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, his works echoing those of the Pre-Raphaelites and heralding those of the Arts and Crafts movement.