Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

In 1848, seven young English artists — the oldest twenty-one, the youngest sixteen — formed a secret society in defiance of everything the Royal Academy of Arts represented. They called themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and their program was simple and radical: to paint with the directness and sincerity that European art had possessed before Raphael taught everyone to paint beautifully instead of truthfully. Their targets were the smooth academic painting they called "Sir Sloshua" (after Sir Joshua Reynolds), the mannered studio compositions, the trained lighting, the polished surfaces that concealed the world rather than revealing it. Their method was equally radical: paint outdoors, from life, on a white ground, in brilliant pigments, with every leaf and grass-blade and hair individually rendered. The results scandalized the critics and electrified the public. Dickens called Millais's Christ in the House of His Parents "mean, repulsive, and revolting....