1861

Italy (from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron)

British, 1800 - 1863

This print is reproduction of an 1832 painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner. Turner’s source was Lord Byron’s epic early nineteenth-century poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and its evocative depictions of Italy’s historic landscapes. When he exhibited the painting, Turner borrowed a passage from Byron to narrate it: “…and now, fair Italy! / Thou art the garden of the world… / Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced / With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced.”