Allegorical society portraiture of the Van Dyck tradition -- bibliographical materials

Hugh Witemeyer, Professor of English, University of New Mexico

Note 71 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.

See Hagstrum, The Sister Arts, p. 144; Edgar Wind,"Studies in Allegorical Portraiture," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, I (1937-38), 138-62; and Praz, Mnemosyne, p. 7. Praz writes: "the custom dated from the times of Alexandria and Imperial Rome, when sovereigns were represented with attributes of divinity, and lasted until the time of Canova, who represented Ferdinand IV of Naples . . . in the garb of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and culture."

For Van Dyck's British allegorical portraits, see Gustav Gluck, ed., Van Dyck: Des Meisters Gemailde in 5 71 Abbildungen, 2d ed. (Stuttgart and Berlin: Klassiker der Kunst, 1931), pp. 399, 455, 489; and David Piper, The English Face, p. 97.

Last modified 20 September 2000