"Paintings of wise men" — a note to Tennyson's "The Palace of Art"
George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University
Tennyson here creates a pantheon of major poets, including Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, which is very similar to the bas relief of poets on the Albert Memorial (1876). I assume that include such a pantheon on the monument to Prince Albert derives not from Tennyson's influence but from the Victorian desire to create a literary and artistic canon, in part to provide a pedigree and a context for contemporary artists and writers.
[Back to the passage in "The Palace of Art"]
References
Tennyson, Alfred. The Poems. Ed. Christopher Ricks. (Longmans Annotated Poets Series) London: Longmans, 1969.
Last modified 11 October 2005