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Pictures from Italy
John Gordon Thomson
Engraver: E. Dalziel
1880
composite woodblock engraving
Framed, 7.5 cm high by 5.1 cm wide; facing page 180
The Works of Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy, and American Notes. Illustrated by J. Gordon Thomson and A. B. Frost. Chapman and Hall.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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The fire within the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and the household fires of generations have decayed; as thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, while the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion by a Painter’s hand, yet lives on, in enduring grace and youth. [Final Chapter, "A Rapid Diorama," p. 180]
Pictures from Italy: Eight Illustrations. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens (1908) utilizes this illustration as if it had been a title-page vignette rather than a tail-piece in the original Household Edition volume. Although it has no real textual referent since the image of the young Italian peasant woman on a picture-postcard is hardly Leonardo da Vinci's La Giancanda, "the nameless Florentine Lady" (180) whom Dickens mentions on the closing page. The other "pictures from Italy" appear to involve a man sleeping against a wall, a pair of priests in aeronautical hats, Romeo and Juliet at Friar Laurence's cell (lower right), and a beggar-woman, who serves as a col tempo foil to the youthful beauty in the central postcard. Displayed as a tailpiece, the illustration summarizes a number of the Italian scenes, as well as the motifs of torpor, indolence, and poverty with which Dickens chastises the Catholic Church for opposing material and social progress.
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy. Illustrated by Samuel Palmer. London: Chapman and Hall, 1846; rpt., 1850.
Dickens, Charles. American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy in Works. Illustrated by Marcus Stone. Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall: 1862, rpt. 1874.
Dickens, Charles. Final chapter, "A Rapid Diorama." Pictures from Italy, Sketches by Boz, and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Thomas Nast. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1877. Pp. 70-82.
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy and American Notes. Illustrated by A. B. Frost and Gordon Thomson. London: Chapman and Hall, 1880. Pp. 1-381.
Orestano, Francesca. "Charles Dickens and Italy: The 'New Picturesque'.” Dickens and Italy: Little Dorrit and Pictures from Italy, ed. Michael Hollington and Francesca Orestano. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. Pp. 49-67.
Thomson, Gordon (illustrator). "Pictures from Italy." Pictures from Italy: Eight Illustrations. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings, by Fred Barnard, Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz); J. Mahoney; Charles Green; A. B. Frost; Gordon Thomson; J. McL. Ralston; H. French; E. G. Dalziel; F. A. Fraser, and Sir Luke Fildes; printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman and Hall, 1908. Page 243.
Last modified 5 May 2019