[Of the Polishing of Virgins] · Centre for Early Modern Visual Culture

Title: [Of the Polishing of Virgins]
Period: 1800-1850;
Geographic: Europe; Europe
Description: A woman sits on a grassy hill in a white dress and satin belt, with her right hand on her chest and her left leaning against the ground. She looks off into the distance on the right as a woman standing behind her places a garland of flowers on her head. On the left two more women aid the virgin dress lavishly, one wears a bun and points towards the one on the right while the other with shoulder length hair fiddles with a string of acorns. The image is occasioned by Don Quixote saying "Poetry, Signor hidalgo, I take to be like a tender virgin, very young and extremely beautiful, whom divers other virgins, namely, all the other sciences, make it their business to enrich, polish and adorn; and to her it belongs to make use of them all, and on her part to give lustre to them all."
Image Creator: Andrew Rossington (Illustrator); Leloir (Engraver)
Type: StillImage; Engraving
Identifier: mta:26057
Language: eng
Source Name: Don Quixote De La Mancha
Parent Collection: Bohn 1842
Image: mta_26057_OBJ.jpg
Collection: Don Quixote
Subject: Clothing and dress; Fiction; Virgin; Legends; Flowers; Spain