Note 12 in the author's "Victorianized Romans: Images of Rome in Victorian Painting."
A French pictorial analogue of one part of Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)" appears in Hector Leroux, The Believers (Prayer to the Goddess Hygeia) (1862; Verdun, Musée de la Princerie). For an illustration and additional information about this picture, see The Second Empire, 1852-1870: Art in France under Napoleon III (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978), p. 326. By presenting a moving image of pagans at prayer before an idol, Leroux, like Swinburne, simultaneously dignified pagan belief and removed the privileged position Christianity presumably held in the mind of the spectator.
Last modified 3 December 2004