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SPEAKER 1: So here we are looking at William Holman
Hunt's "Claudio and Isabella" from 1850 in Tate, Britain.
This is 1850.
So it's two years after the formation
of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
So we've got real, pure pre-Raphaelite style here.
SPEAKER 2: Not just style, but in terms
of subject matter, also, right?
SPEAKER 1: How integrated text and image are here,
that there's text on the top of the frame that has Claudius's
line, "Death is a fearful thing."
And Isabella's, "And a shamed life, a hateful."
SPEAKER 2: And then below, in a beautiful kind
of Medieval script, "Measure for Measure."
SPEAKER 1: The Shakespeare play that this is from.
And so what's happening, is that Claudio
has been arrested, a little bit under false charges,
for impregnating his mistress.
SPEAKER 2: Though they're engaged.
SPEAKER 1: Right.
Claudio's sister, Isabella, is about to become a nun.
And the man who's arrested and imprisoned Claudio,
has said, well, maybe if your sister agrees to sleep with me,
maybe I'll release you from prison.
SPEAKER 2: And she refuses to give away her virginity.
And remember, she's about to enter a nunnery.
SPEAKER 1: Right.
She's very chaste, she's very devout.
This has been interpreted as the moment when Claudio appeals
to Isabella to save his life.
And she refuses, although there are somewhat
differing interpretations about exactly what moment this is.
SPEAKER 2: I think there's ambiguity even in his reaction,
right?
But what's interesting for me is that Hunt
has chosen this really high-pitched moral moment,
where we don't know which way it's going to go.
And in a sense, we have to ask ourselves,
how would we act in that moment.
SPEAKER 1: It's that key moment, a thing that pre-Raphaelites
love to do, that totally pregnant moment.
When I'm looking at that back light
and I see that cherry tree behind them, that's in bloom.
And then did you notice what's between them?
SPEAKER 2: There's that little spire of a church.
SPEAKER 1: Right that kind of rose between them.
And so, you can't really blame Claudio
for asking his sister to betray her chastity
and her vows, because he's going to die, and give his life up
for nothing.
And you can't blame her, either, for not
wanting to do what she's asked to do.
SPEAKER 2: And look at the way that he's portrayed her,
the look of concern on her face--
SPEAKER 1: And sympathy.
SPEAKER 2: --is extraordinary.
She's got her hands over his heart.
SPEAKER 1: She's comforting him.
SPEAKER 2: There's this tremendous sense
of responsibility that she feels.
SPEAKER 1: And I'm noticing how close everything
is to us, these two figures.
That wall of the prison behind.
And actually, I think , Hunt visited a prison in order
to paint it directly from life.
SPEAKER 2: There's an incredible amount of attention and detail
in the rendering, even of the insignificant.
I mean, that's what's so extraordinary is
the focus is not simply on the hands, it's not on the face.
In fact, one could even argue that the face is somewhat
de-emphasized.
Claudio's face is in shadow as it
looks at us, which is a really interesting choice.
He's in front of a brighter window.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, they're back lit, which is very strange.
SPEAKER 2: It's extremely unusual.
But what that means is that there's
a very, very even light throughout the entire image,
which allows our eye to meander down both their bodies,
beyond the hands, down his legs to the shackle.
And then, as much attention is lavished on the chain,
on the boards of the floor, on the brick that
is exposed in the window frame.
SPEAKER 1: On the moss that seems
to be growing on the stone.
SPEAKER 2: Look at the vividness of that stone in back
of the lyre.
I mean, you can really see the age and the wear.
SPEAKER 1: All of this is this idea that the pre-Raphaelites
have of not using academic formulas,
and this return to nature.
And a return to the Renaissance primitives,
the pre-Raphaelites.
SPEAKER 2: So before Raphael.
SPEAKER 1: Right, looking at northern Renaissance painting,
looking at the history of art before things
became kind of so easy and formulaic.
And when artists were, in a way, discovering
nature for the first time again after the Middle Ages.
If we look at the color, it's nothing
like we would see in Royal Academy paintings
before the pre-Raphaelites.
SPEAKER 2: The purple of his velvet leggings,
the red of his velvet and fur-lined tunic.
And then what I find most extraordinary
is the color of her presumably white robes.
There's no white in any of that.
SPEAKER 1: No, there's blues and greens and yellows and golds.
This is a kind of depth and intensity of color
that would never have been possible
before the pre-Raphaelites.
SPEAKER 2: So what that does for me is it
creates a kind of visual parallel
to the intensity of the emotion that's being represented here.
And in the sense of the emotional dilemma
that's being presented here.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah.
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