John everett millais joan of arc biography

Having emerged as a bone-fide child prodigy, Millais would embark on a career that saw him enjoy domestic and international fame in his own lifetime. As a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood , he joined a tight-knit group of artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt , who rebelled against the prevailing norms in academic art.

Known initially for an unprecedented attention to pictorial realism, Millais would develop a penchant for political works before, in later years, devoting himself exclusively to portraiture and Scottish landscapes. Millais is also recognized as the first Academy artist to expand his repertoire through newspaper illustration and reproductive prints.

His brilliant career culminated in his election as President of the Royal Academy in Having already caused an uproar within the British art establishment with his paintings, Millais, with Effie Gray and John Ruskin, scandalized Victorian society as players in one of the greatest love triangles in the history of art. Millais here depicts a young Christ just after his hand has been accidentally impaled by a nail.

His father, Joseph, is in anxious close attendance, leaning over his workshop table, while, Mary, his mother, kneels beside him in an attempt to provide comfort. His grandmother, Anne, still holds the pliers she has used to remove the nail, while Christ's cousin, John the Baptist, brings him a dish of water as a balm for his wound.

Millais meaning

Rich in symbolism, the art historian Jason Rosenfeld identifies the "objects that refer to events in the Passion of Christ: carpentry tools that will later be used to make his crucifix on the back wall; the cut on his palm that has dripped blood on to his left foot and alludes to the stigmata, his wounds on the cross; the dove perched on a ladder, reflecting the Holy Spirit; the water carried by the young John the Baptist on the right, referring to his role in the story; and even the kneeling pose of the Virgin, which foreshadows her prostrate form at the foot of the cross".

Millais's almost obsessive attention to detail was a signifying feature of the Pre-Raphaelite style. Indeed, Pre-Raphaelitism insisted on a fidelity to fine detail, even at the risk of showing ugliness and there were many who criticized the movement.