Saturday, May 14, 2011

John Everett Millais - Christ in the House of His Parents (The Carpenter's Shop) [1849-50]


Millais (1829 – 1896) based the setting on a real carpenter’s shop in Oxford Street, London. Symbols of the Crucifixion figure prominently: the wood, the nails, the cut in Christ’s hand and the blood on his foot. Millais was viciously attacked by the press for showing the holy family as ordinary. Charles Dickens described Christ as ‘a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red-haired boy in a night-gown.’

[Oil on canvas, 864 x 1397 mm]

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