Valentim Resgatando Sílvia de Proteu

Holman Hunt painted this in 1851, when he and his friends in the two-year-old Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were still young and under heavy fire. The scene is from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona, the moment Valentine stops his friend Proteus from assaulting Sylvia, while Julia, disguised as a boy, looks on. Hunt painted it outdoors in real woods, every leaf sharp, the colours bright and hard in the way the group insisted on against the brown varnish of academic taste. When it went on show the critics were rough with it. What changed things was John Ruskin, the most powerful art writer in Britain, who came out publicly in defence of the Pre-Raphaelites that year. Birmingham bought the picture in 1887.