Eve Tushnet went to see the new exhibit of pre-Raphaelite paintings at the National Gallery of Art and came away fascinated by the movement’s controversial emphasis on “the human qualities of Jesus and the saints at the expense of transcendence”:
Ford Madox Brown’s huge Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet originally showed a Christ naked to the waist, but public outcry prompted him to paint in a loosely draped shirt. John Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents drew controversy (Charles Dickens loathed it) because it seemed to portray the Holy Family as just another carpenter and his clan: ordinary people doing ordinary things.
And Rossetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini!—his Annunciation—is still shocking today: Mary, a scrawny girl cornered against the wall in a thin nightgown, stares blankly at the angel, who lifts a hand to bless or maybe just to calm her. This is no royal queen of Heaven. The look on her face is the look of a teenager watching the second line darken on her pregnancy test: What does this mean? What on earth do I do now? She’s sallow and almost vampirized, and clearly shaken. This is the moment before she says yes.
Earlier Dish on the exhibit here.
(Image: Ford Madox Brown’s Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet, 1876, via WikiPaintings)
The Dish 