ABSTRACT
S.’s descriptive meditation on a painting in the gallery of the Uffizi Palace is assigned by Mary to ‘Florence, 1819’ in 1824 where the poem was first printed. The Shelleys had lodgings in Florence from 2 October 1819 to 26 January 1820. In a letter of 13 or 14 October S. announced to Maria Gisborne his ‘design of studying piecemeal’ the paintings and sculptures in the Uffizi (L ii 126); and he wrote to T. J. Hogg the following April that during what had been a severe winter in the city he had ‘dedicated every sunny day to the study of the gallery there’ (L ii 186). Mary records his visiting the Uffizi on 11, 13 and 20 October; and on 31 December she makes an entry retrospective to 12 November (the day their child Percy Florence was born): ‘Visit the Galleries’ (Mary Jnl i 298–302).
