L'Angélus

Two peasants stand still in a darkening field, heads bowed, a basket of potatoes and a fork between them. In the distance a church tower catches the last light, and that is the whole story the title tells you. The bell is ringing the evening Angelus, the prayer that marked the end of the working day, and the couple have simply stopped to say it. Millet said he was remembering his own grandmother, who made the family pause for that prayer whenever they heard the bell. He first called the picture Prayer for the Potato Crop, then added the far-off steeple and gave it the name we use now. Decades later Salvador Dalí became convinced the mood was too grief-stricken for an ordinary prayer, and insisted the basket had first been a small coffin for a dead child. He pressed the Louvre until they X-rayed the canvas, and the scan did show a painted-out geometric shape beneath the basket, though most scholars read it as Millet simply reworking the composition. What stays with people is the light. It's the moment the sun has just gone, the fields have gone quiet, and the two figures are still holding their pose.