John Everett Millais was one of the founder-members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with Holman Hunt and D. G. Rossetti. His first major religious painting, titled only by a Biblical text but know as 'Christ in the House of His Parents' (see The Pre-Raphaelites, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery/Penguin Books [1984], no. 26), caused immense controversy because of its determined realism when it was shown in the Royal Academy exhibition ('In all the papers...the attack on Millais had been most virulent and audacious,' wrote W. M. Rossetti, quoted by Leonée Ormond in 'Dickens and Painting: Contemporary Art', The Dickensian, Vol. 80 [1984], p. 21; this article contains an excellent analysis of Dickens's reaction to Millais's painting). Dickens was a fervent admirer of Raphael and, as Ormond observes, felt that the Brotherhood's name 'implied a deliberate attack' on the great Renaissance artist.
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