Why the Critics Were Outraged by this Victorian Masterpiece
The brilliant artwork that broke with tradition
What do we see in this painting?
We’re inside a carpenter’s workshop, where scrolls of wood shavings litter the floor — telling us that this is a functioning, utilitarian place of work.
At the front, a young boy has just injured himself on a nail, prompting his mother to kneel down in sympathy and his father to reach across and inspect the wound.
The painting, made by the English artist John Everett Millais in about 1850, is letter-box shaped and possesses a conspicuous degree of symmetry in its composition — indicating that something perfect or transcendent is subtly taking shape before our eyes.
Meanwhile, an ingenious variety of symbols is scattered discreetly through the scene, ripe for reading and interpretation.
Yet despite its elegant composition and sensitive subject matter, the painting caused huge controversy among the critics when it was first shown, and even received a furious attack from one of the most famous writers of the century, Charles Dickens.
Foreshadowing
The painting exemplifies the tradition of typology — that is, a method of biblical interpretation where…
