The cherub in question

Hugh Witemeyer, Professor of English, University of New Mexico

Note 2 to Chapter 6 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.

The cherub in question is probably "the little cherub riding astride a cloud" whom George Eliot noted in Correggio's Madonna with Saint Sebastian at Dresden in 1858 (Cross, II,48). Lucy's cherub-face returns to haunt Maggie later in the novel: "the picture grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the avenging hand of remorse" (VII, 4:380).

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Last modified 20 September 2000