Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus was transferred to the Liverpool Academy in 1851. In 1887, the painting was bought by the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. , the painting is still in their collection. Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus is an 1851 oil painting by William Holman Hunt. It depicts a scene from William Shakespeare's "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". The top left and right portions of the frame include excerpts from act V, scene IV of the play. From left to right, the characters are Julia, disguised as a page, Sylvia, Valentine, and Proteus, who is in love with
The Two Gentlemen of Verona clearly perceives the offer as a noble gesture of friendship, not an actual offer, because he does not even look towards Silvia but rather falls into an embrace with Valentine" (although Derrick does raise the question that if Valentine is "not" offering Silvia to Proteus, why does Julia swoon?). There are other theories regarding this final scene, however. For example, in his 1990 edition of the play for the New Cambridge Shakespeare, Kurt Schlueter suggests that Valentine is indeed handing Silvia over to Proteus, but the audience is not supposed to take it literally; the incident is farcical, and should