Note 29 to Chapter 5 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.
This conflation was first noted by Edward T. Hurley, "Piero di Cosimo: An Alternate Analogy for George Eliot's Realism," Victorian Newsletter, 31 (1967), 54-56. George Eliot had seen a cartoon for Buonaventura Genelli's unfinished Bacchus verwandelt die Seerauber in Delphine when she visited the artist's studio in Munich in 1858; see "Germany," Beinecke Library, entry for 10 May 1858. The cartoon has since been destroyed; see Hans Ebert, Buonaventura Genelli: Leben und Werk (Weimar: Hermann B6hlaus, 1971), pp. 48, 218.
Last modified 20 September 2000