Note 33 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.
On the special vividness of Vasari's life of Piero, see Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York: Harper Nc Row, 1962), pp. 65-67; and R. Langton Douglas, Piero di Cosimo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946), p. 7. The vita was immensely popular among the German Romantics, thanks to W. H. Wackenroder's Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebendes KlosterbrudeN (1797). Many of the eccentricities attributed to Piero in Romola come straight from Vasari, as do the descriptions of the studio in chapter 18 and the allegoncal procession in chapter 20. Except for the picture of Venus, Cupid, and Mars placed on the easel in the studio scene, however, not one of the paintings given to the artist in the novel recreates an actual work by the historical Piero di Cosimo. There is no evidence that George Eliot knew any of his work at first hand, beyond what she learned from the ecphrases of Vasari. Barbara Hardy (The Novels of George Eliot, p. 173) argues that some of the details in Tito's wedding-portrait derive from Vasari.
Last modified 20 September 2000