BARTOLOMÉ ESTEBAN MURILLO

The subject of this painting is based on a passage from Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, an epic poem published in 1590. Many American artists, including John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West, looked to Spenser’s work for inspiration. Allston’s representation of Florimell, a symbol of virtue and chastity who flees an unseen evil, follows Spenser’s description of the heroine very closely: “Still as she fled her eyes she backward threw / As fearing evil that pursued her fast / And her fair yellow locks behind her flew.”