British - Christ in The House of his Parents

• Artist

  Millais
• Form & Style

  Oil on canvas, Pre-Raphaelite
• Date

  1849
• Explain PRB

  The pivotal art movement called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - which Millais was a founding member of - challenges the smooth brushwork, idealisation and pyramidal composition techniques commonly found within cinquecento artists like Raphael’s pieces.
• Purpose

  Depicts this religious painting through intertwining traditional techniques with an innovative subject matter.

  
  

  Millais’s return to an older artistic style (such as early Renaissance and medieval), possibly inspired by Ruskin the pre-Raphaelite style, but also equally by the Industrial Revolution.

  
  

  Beginning in the late 1700s, many saw this as a destructive to the environment and damaging to human happiness, in which Millais particularly wanted to remedy this within his artworks.
• Give point about positioning - lunette

  Point: Millais represents the labour before industrial revolution, using traditional techniques to depict the Holy Family in a carpentry workshop.

  
  

  Reasoning: In the shallow spaced foreground, around wooden table are 6 figures: young John the Baptiste on far right, Mary and Jesus in immediate foreground on centre axis, a carpenter’s assistant on far left and just behind table is St Anne (Mary’s mother) and Joseph.

  
  

  Effect: Specific positioning creates a traditional lunette shape, highlighting that Millais conforms to the pastoral tradition.

  
• Give point about symbols

  Point: Likewise, the piece also boasts the traditional detail of multiple religious symbols.

  
  

  Reasoning 1: Strong emphasis on wood and nails to represent the crucifixion.

  
  

  Reasoning 2: The fact that Jesus has cut his left hand in the shape of a stigmata.

  
  

  Reasoning 3: While John the Baptist brings water to clean his wound.

  
  

  Reasoning 4: The dove perched on the ladder near Joseph signifies the Holy Spirit.

  
  

  Reasoning 5: Sheep on the left hand side of the central axis in the background (evidently seen through an open door) denotes the congregation.  

  
• Give point about innovative subject matter

  Point: His innovative take on subject matter also evident. Even though piece is religious painting, rather untraditional in nature.

  
  

  Reasoning 1: Holy Family depicted as working-class individuals within a rustic and unrefined carpentry shop (which is functional not holy).

  
  

  Reasoning 2: Not idealised (contrasting to the academic style of painting, such as “The Birth of Venus” by Cabanel), since all have dirty feet & Joseph has protruding arm veins + an unusual sunburn which spans from wrists to tips of fingers.

  
  

  Reasoning 3: Jesus also been uniquely depicted with red hair (since the pre-Raphaelites saw this as strikingly beautiful and believed it evoked the sensuality of medieval themes)

  
  

  Reasoning 4: The carpenter’s assistant on the left-hand side of the piece is not a part of the Holy Family - random participant within the scene.

  
• Give conclusion + CT

  However, his emphasis on depicting reality and nature with both traditional techniques and an innovative subject matter, caused significant outrage when it was displayed at the Royal Academy in 1850.

  
  

  It was considered far from the Academy’s high standards of beauty, in which Charles Dickens stated that Jesus was depicted as “a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy” and that Mary appeared “so horrible in her ugliness”.

  
  

  Due to this strong established controversy, Queen Victoria asked that it be removed from the exhibition entirely.  
• Give additional context - Oxford Movement

  Additionally, another aspect Millais included within his subject matter was concepts from the Oxford Movement, which believed in reintroducing Catholic beliefs into Angelicin (English Protestant) Christianity. One was the idea of typology: events in the Old Testament predicted the events in the New Testament, e.g. the crucifixion.