About this video
Steven Zucker and Beth Harris look at Jean-François Millet's L'Angelus, a small, sentimental painting of two farm workers who stop work to pray when they hear the church bells. For Millet it recalled his childhood, and the hosts explain how it offers a moral message about hard work and faith, finding reverence in the modern rural world rather than through traditional religious iconography.
You'll be able to
- describe what is happening in L'Angelus and why the figures have stopped work.
- explain the moral message the hosts find in the painting.
- explain the difference between a religious subject and a painting of people being religious.
Key words
- Angelus
- A daily prayer, announced by church bells, that remembers the Annunciation.
- Annunciation
- The Christian story of the angel Gabriel telling Mary she will have a son, Jesus.
- silhouetted
- Shown as a dark shape against a bright background.
- iconography
- The standard images and symbols used to show particular subjects, such as religious stories.
- moralizing
- Teaching a lesson about right and wrong.
Transcript
(jazz music) Dr. Zucker: We're in the Musee d'Orsay and we're looking at a painting by Millet, which is called L'Angelus. It's a really famous painting in the 19th century.
Dr. Harris: Right, and into the early 20th century, when very high sums were paid for it, but it's clearly not the star at the Musee d'Orsay anymore.
Dr. Zucker: It's a very sentimental scene.
Dr. Harris: It is, and 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 and they've stopped for a daily prayer called the Angelus, which commemorates the annunciation and although it may seem like a kind of religious painting, or a scene of people being religious, mostly I think, for Millet it was a memory of his childhood.
Dr. Zucker: 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: Right. 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.
It's about the land and about values and what's right. What's important is hard work and remembering God and our place in the universe. It's a very moralizing image.
Dr. Zucker: This is an image that is cutting away at 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: Silhouetted. Dr. Zucker: Right, and that, in a sense, makes it hard to read their faces. They become everyman.
Dr. Harris: And 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 and instead we find religious experiences in sunsets.
Dr. Zucker: 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. (jazz music)
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