Note 15 to Chapter 2 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Letters, III, 294. Among the "centres" mentioned in her journal are the Brera and the Ambrosian Library in Milan; the Vatican, Lateran, and Capitoline museums in Rome; the Museo Borbonico in Naples; the Uffizi, the Pitti, the Academy, the Bargello, and the monastery of San Marco in Florence; the Academy in Bologna; the Arena Chapel in Padua; the Scuola di San Rocco, the Academy, and the Church of the Frari in Venice.
George Eliot studied painting and sculpture not only in the famous museums but also in a great many churches, palaces, villas, and ateliers. In Rome, for example, she visited the Borghese Palace, the Villa Farnesina, and the studio of Johann Friedrich Overbeck, the great Nazarene painter. All of these details come from "Recollections of Italy 1860" (Cross, 11, 140-211).
Last modified 20 September 2000