Shelley's Ghost

This is a copy of the portrait painted by Amelia Curran in Rome in 1819, and was made either for Mary Shelley or Sir Percy and Lady Shelley. The ornate frame, complete with a genuine signature cut probably from a letter, suggests that it was prominently displayed in the Shelley sanctum. Like all later copies of Curran’s original, it makes Shelley look closer to Matthew Arnold’s description of the poet as ‘a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.’

? Mary Shelley; (by 1857) Sir Percy Shelley; (bequest, 1889) Lady Shelley; (bequest, 1899) John C.E. Shelley (later Sir John Shelley-Rolls); (bequest, 1961) Bodleian.

Shelley’s Guitar, no. 88.

See references in full