Jean-François Millet, L’Angélus, c. 1857-1859, oil on canvas, 21 x 26 (53.3 × 66.0 cm) (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)
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Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:00] We’re in the Musée d’Orsay, and we’re looking at a painting by Millet, which is called “L’Angélus”. It’s a really famous painting in the 19th century.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:00] Right, and into the early 20th century, when very high sums were paid for it. But it’s clearly not the star at the Musée d’Orsay anymore.
Dr. Zucker: [0:22] It’s a very sentimental scene.
Dr. Harris: [0:24] It is. It’s a relatively small painting showing two people who have stopped to pray. They’ve heard the bells of the church that we can see in the distance. They’ve stopped for a daily prayer called the Angelus, which commemorates the Annunciation.
[0:44] Although it may seem like a religious painting or a scene of people being religious, mostly for Millet it was a memory of his childhood.
Dr. Zucker: [0:48] The way in which his grandmother would stop everyone when they were doing their weeding or planting so that they could do their evening prayers.
Dr. Harris: [0:59] Right. And so the man and the woman have clearly stopped their work. The man holds his hat in his hand and looks down. The woman also looks down, holding her hands to her chest. Their tools are all around them, and the sun sets in the distance. The horizon is rather high.
[1:10] It’s about the land, and about values, and what’s right. What’s important is hard work, remembering God, and our place in the universe. It’s a very moralizing image.
Dr. Zucker: [1:23] This is an image that is cutting away all of the artifice of the city, and looking for the inherent moral values that are at the heart of what the French hold as important. As you said, monumental, in the way that they stand against the horizon line. They’re backlit. The sky is quite bright.
Dr. Harris: [1:39] Silhouetted.
Dr. Zucker: [1:42] That, in a sense, makes it hard to read their faces. They become every man.
Dr. Harris: [1:47] Even though this is not a painting of a religious subject, it’s very 19th century in that it’s a painting of people who are being religious. It always seems like it’s a little bit hard in the 19th century to use Christian iconography in the usual way. Instead we find religious experiences in sunsets.
Dr. Zucker: [2:06] Millet fed an important appetite that existed. He had found a solution locating, if not God, at least the reverence of God here in the modern world.
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