The Escape of a Heretic, 1559
Artist
Sir John Everett Millais
(British, 1829-1896)
Date1857
Object number65.0568
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions43 1/8 x 31 1/8 in. (109.5 x 79.1 cm)
frame: 56 1/2 x 44 5/8 x 4 in. (143.5 x 113.3 x 10.2 cm)
frame: 56 1/2 x 44 5/8 x 4 in. (143.5 x 113.3 x 10.2 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineMuseo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc.
Collections
DescriptionThis fictional, dramatic scene depicts a young man disguised as a friar rescuing a woman condemned as a heretic by the Spanish Inquisition, as indicated by her yellow penitential garment, or sanbenito. One of her captors, a Dominican monk, has been tied up with a rope and gagged with a rosary.
Millais, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was a vocal critic of the atrocities committed in the name of religion throughout history. He created this artwork while living in Perth, Scotland, with his wife, Effie Chalmers, for six years. There, he met William Stirling (later Sir William Stirling-Maxwell), a well-known Hispanophile who published the groundbreaking "Annals of the Artists of Spain" in 1848. Stirling's collection of sixteenth-century engravings depicting scenes from the Spanish Inquisition inspired this piece.
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