Note 51 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.
Anthony is described as an "Antinous in a pigtail" (2:155), and his verbal portrait is modeled upon classical sculpture in marble: "Nothing could be more delicate than the blond complexion -- its bloom set off by the powdered hair -- than the veined overhanging eyelids, which gave an indolent expression to the hazel eyes; nothing more finely cut than the transparent nostril and the short upper lip. Perhaps the chin and lower jaw were too small for an irreproachable profile, but the defect was on the side of that delicacy and finesse which was the distinctive characteristic of the whole person, and which was carried out in the clear brown arch of the eyebrows, and the marble smoothness of the sloping forehead" (2:154). Later Anthony is compared to "an Olympian god" with an "exquisite outline and rounded fairness" (2:171), and to "a fine cameo in high relief" (2:172).
Last modified 20 September 2000