The Escape of a Heretic by John Everett Millais

The Escape of a Heretic
Source: Museo de Arte de Ponce

There’s a particular type of dramatic history painting that is unique to the art of John Everett Millais. While Millais is typically known as a Pre-Raphaelite painter—not a group of artists typically known for dramatic scenes—he experimented with many different artistic styles and techniques during his long career.

Despite this, Millais returned to one theme again and again throughout his artistic life: moments of great emotional drama seen through the lens of historical events. These pieces usually portrayed imagined historical figures escaping from extreme and dangerous situations, inspired by real historical events. The Proscribed Royalist, 1651, A Huguenot on St. Bartholomew's Day, The Ransom and The Martyr of Solway are all examples of this motif in his oeuvre. However, my favorite example of this theme in Millais’ work is The Escape of a Heretic.

This genre is typically known as history painting. This style of history painting was especially popular in nineteenth century England, with many artists borrowing subjects from European and English history for their work. Aside from their popularity, history paintings were also a useful vehicle to explore heightened emotion or to convey the artist’s ideas about the lessons offered by the past. Millais usually used history painting to express intense emotion and moments of human connection. 

The Escape of a Heretic certainly achieves this aim. The painting depicts a young woman fleeing the Spanish Inquisition, a policy of religious cleansing that was instituted by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to remove non-Catholics from Spanish society. By the time Millais was painting in the nineteenth century, the Inquisition was becoming synonymous with cruelty, torture, and injustice in general. 

In this piece, we see the young woman—dressed in the garb of a heretic condemned to death—being rescued by her lover, a young man disguised as a monk. Her jailer, bound and gagged, can be seen in the background. We catch the two figures in a moment of action, with the young woman leaning toward her lover while he cuts her bonds. The motion of the composition conveys a sense of continuing narrative energy, leading the two figures onto the next stage of their escape. When Millais exhibited The Escape of a Heretic, it was accompanied by a fictional account of the young woman’s escape. According to this document, the heretic escaped from her prison disguised in the clothes of the jailer, a clever twist to the story. 

Although the piece represents a fictitious anecdote, The Escape of a Heretic was carefully  researched and executed (like all of Millais’ work). Millais’ wife, Effie Gray, even researched authentic costumes for The Escape of a Heretic (as can be seen in the young woman’s brightly colored sambenito). 

However, in my opinion, it is the drama of the piece that truly gives it emotional impact and visual interest. It is a history painting in the best and truest sense of the term: a piece of art that tells a story (after all, the word historia means story in Latin). In any case, I hope you enjoyed the story (and the drama) of The Escape of a Heretic.