George Eliot's Trips to Italy

This exhibit tracks the four trips that novelist George Eliot and her companion George Henry Lewes took to Italy in the 1860s, in 1860, 1861, 1864, and 1869. These trips were essential to shaping her sense of the visual arts, especially the art of the Italian Renaissance, which plays a particularly important role both in the shifting 19th-century ideas of canonical Western art and in Eliot's novels. Move the marker (dotted vertical line) on the timeline back and forth with your mouse/trackpad to see fewer trips. Click on any of the "waypoints" shown on the timeline or on the panel to the right of the map for more information. You can zoom in and out and maneuver to different locations at any point, as on any interactive map.