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Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 4
Lesson 2: The Pre-Raphaelites and mid-Victorian art- A Beginner's Guide to the Pre-Raphaelites
- The Aesthetic Movement
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Millais's Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Ophelia
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Mariana
- Millais, Portrait of John Ruskin
- A Portrait of John Ruskin and Masculine Ideals of Dress in the Nineteenth Century
- Sir John Everett Millais, Spring (Apple Blossoms)
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- Millais, The Vale of Rest
- John Everett Millais, Bubbles
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Claudio and Isabella
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts ("Strayed Sheep")
- Hunt, Our English Coasts
- Hunt, the Awakening Conscience
- Hunt, The Awakening Conscience
- William Holman Hunt, Isabella or the Pot of Basil
- William Holman Hunt, The Lady of Shalott
- William Holman Hunt, The Shadow of Death
- William Holman Hunt, The Scapegoat
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, The Last of England
- Ford Madox Brown, Work
- Pre-Raphaelites: Curator's choice - Ford Madox Brown's 'Work'
- Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini
- Rossetti, Beata Beatrix
- Rossetti, Proserpine
- Wallis, Chatterton
- Wallis, Chatterton
- William Powell Frith, Derby Day
- Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Dyce, Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th, 1858
- Emily Mary Osborn, Nameless and Friendless
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Thoughts of the Past
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, The Golden Stairs
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- Sleeping Beauty — but without the Kiss: Burne-Jones and the Briar Rose series
- Burne-Jones, The Depths of the Sea
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Burne-Jones, Hope
- Sir Edward Burne-Jones, four stained glass windows at Birmingham Cathedral
- Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott
- William Butterfield, All Saints, Margaret Street
- William Morris, The Green Dining Room
- William Morris and Philip Webb, Red House
- Pre-Raphaelites
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Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella
Sir John Everett Millais, Isabella, 1849, oil on canvas, 103 x 142.8 cm (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool). A conversation with Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris. Created by Smarthistory.
Video transcript
(piano music) - [Steven] We're in the Walker Art Gallery and we're looking at a large
canvas by John Everett Millais. This is called "Isabella" and
it tells a tragic love story. - [Beth] What we're looking at is Millais' first Pre-Raphaelite painting, which will have such an
enormous impact on Victorian art and European art, broadly, in the later part of the 19th century. This is a significant statement about what he thinks art should be. He paints this at the end of 1848, the year that Millais and
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others form the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. What it means to be a Pre-Raphaelite was to look back to art
before the time of Raphael, to what, at that point, was
called the Italian Primitives. - [Steven] What they saw
in this early Italian art was a kind of simplicity,
something that was more truthful and in opposition to the
formulas that the academies had drawn from Renaissance
and Baroque art. Formulas that, by the mid-19th
century, felt very stale. Millais drawing from a poem by
John Keats called "Isabella". She's the sister to wealthy
Florentine merchants and she has fallen in love with one of her brother's employees, and he falls in love with her. And her brothers are
planning to marry her off to a wealthy man to the
benefit of the family. The brothers kill him
and they bury his body. - [Beth] But Lorenzo's corpse
appears to her in a dream. She goes with her maid to the
place where he's been buried. They dig up the body, they
cut off Lorenzo's head, and bring it back with them. Isabella, grief-stricken, buries
his head in a pot of basil and waters it with her tears. - [Steven] And so what we're seeing is a foretelling of that tragedy. - [Beth] These figures are eating and drinking off beautiful plates in front of brocaded wallpaper. - [Steven] They are each quiet. One drinking, one wiping his mouth, one simply seeming to pause quietly. - [Beth] The lovers
are framed by this view of the sky, of a garden, of nature. This idea of their love being
something that is natural and contrasts with the evil
perpetrated by the brothers who are outlined against that
expensive, brocaded wallpaper. We, as the viewers,
begin to read the story and know the tragedy
that's about to unfold. Millais shows us Lorenzo and Isabella in the very front of the painting. Lorenzo is offering a plate to Isabella who's affectionately
stroking the head of her dog. We get a sense of foreboding when we look at the figure
who reaches out his right leg to poke the innocent dog. - [Steven] We can see that
he's got nutcracker in his hand and he's applying real force
and gritting his teeth. There's a sense of violence. And if we're especially attentive and we look at the
painting of the majolica, that is of the dishware, we can see some violence scenes. For example, the Beheading of Goliath. And there's another sign of the violence that's about to unfold. We see a hawk that's
pulling at a white feather, a sign that it's eating
the last remnant of a dove. A sign of violence overcoming peace. - [Beth] And so we have these clues about violence and cruelty, but we also have signs of
Lorenzo and Isabella's love. The blood oranges symbolize
their love for one another, and we also see passion flowers and roses. Look at how beautifully
the fruit is painted. The attention to that silver
urn overflowing with grapes. The majolica on the table, the tablecloth. There's all of these reminders
of what money can buy. But of course, it's money
that destroys the love between Lorenzo and Isabella. - [Steven] But this painting
is not only about looking to the past. - [Beth] It's important to
remember the year, 1848. We're at the end of a decade
of strikes, of unemployment, of massive poverty. And issues around the social cost of rapid industrialization,
of rapid urbanization were on the top of everyone's minds. And Keats' poem points to the problems, the cost of industrial capitalism that, to many, had run rampant. Keats' writes " With her two
brothers this fair lady dwelt, Enriched from ancestral merchandise, And for them many a weary hand did swelt In torched mines." This is less than 10 years
after people have read in newspapers about
children working in mines, about women working 18-hour
days from unbridled capitalism. And so, in a way, Millais, through Keats, is addressing these very
important contemporary issues. So here we have Millais declaring himself as a Pre-Raphaelite artist. He's put the initials
PRB on this painting. So he is telling his audience
at the Royal Academy, where this was exhibited, "I am a member of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." - [Steven] It is so finely detailed. It has none of the fluidity that we associate with the Renaissance or the art of the Academy. None of the flourish
or Bravura brush work. And then there's this
wonderful interaction of unusual tones and colors. - [Beth] Those pinks worn by Lorenzo, the orange jacket and the deep greens. These are colors that would have, to a 19th century viewer,
looked especially vibrant. So to understand this painting, we have to bring ourselves back to 1849 and where Victorian
painting was at that moment. And with this painting, we see the beginnings of a
rebirth of Victorian painting. (piano music)