We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - Intellectual, Cultural, and Political Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2025
Percy Shelley’s interest in the visual arts (painting and sculpture, but also monuments and landscapes) was much heightened by the years spent in Italy, where in letters and notebooks, he records a wide range of encounters and sharpened his powers of observation, perception, and description. This chapter presents several important contexts and instances, from accounts in his letters to Thomas Love Peacock of the paintings in Bologna that particularly moved him (such as Raphael’s St. Cecilia), to his ekphrastic verses on a painting of the head of Medusa, to his wide-ranging descriptive notes on sculptures in Rome and in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. These are situated historically in terms of increased access to, and engagement with, the visual arts in the period, and as important sites for Shelley to work through the imaginative transmutation of the visual into the visionary in his own poetry and poetic theory.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
