Un ugonotto

On the night of 24 August 1572, the feast of Saint Bartholomew, Catholic Paris turned on its Protestant Huguenots and killed thousands over the days that followed. The signal, according to the story Millais drew on, was a white armband every good Catholic was to tie on to be spared. That is the small strip of cloth the young woman here is trying to knot around her lover's arm. He is quietly pulling it away. She is Catholic, he is Protestant, and to wear it would be to deny his faith. Millais worked the pose out over months, painting the ivy and the brickwork behind them from life in a garden. He had just been attacked for supposed Catholic leanings, and chose, pointedly, a Protestant to be his martyr.