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Victorian Approaches to Religion As Reflected in the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (Philosphiae Doctores)

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The core of the Pre-Raphaelite movement consisted of the dogmatic art critic John Ruskin, moralist artist-preacher William Holman Hunt; intuitive poet-painter Gabriel Rossetti, Conscientious realist and popular sentimentalist John Everett Millais. The were very different men, but they were all typically Victorian and had large followings among the public. Victorian Approaches To Religion As Reflected In The Art Of The Pre-Raphaelites surveys their religious ideas and use of biblical imagery to provide insights into the religious concerns of their era. This was a time of passionate sectarian debates, the spreading of agnosticism, new Bible-interpretations affected by (and sometimes generated by) scientific discoveries, and repeated attempts to reconcile religious beliefs with the growing phenomena of secularization at the end of the century. Victorian Approaches To Religion As Reflected In The Art Of The Pre-Raphaelites is a remarkable and strongly recommended work of impressive and original scholarship which would grace any 19th Art History academic library collection or supplemental studies reading list.

Éva Péteri's book - especially the chapter on John Everett Millais' "Christ in the House of his Parents", p. 34) - helped me to understand Henry Holiday's illustrations to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits. The noisy debate (as described by Péteri) triggered by Millais' painting made the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood known to the public. But Millais perhaps put more in his painting (I think of the "sheep" flocking together outside of the window, and of the composition of the window scene in the 16th century painting "Edward VI and the Pope: An Allegory of Reformation") than Péteri was aware of. Holiday (who associated himself with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) may have chosen to quote elements from that painting for his illustration to the chapter "The Baker's Tale" as a statement on the religious conflicts in the Victorian period.

Péteris book made me curious, what Albert Boime's Art in an Age of Civil Struggle, 1848-1871 (A Social History of Modern Art) has to offer.