The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow (The Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ)
Sir John Everett Millais
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
It took Millais seven years to design twenty images inspired by New Testament Parables for the Dalziel Brothers, and the resulting prints are considered pinnacles of wood engraved illustration. The artist wrote to his publishers, "I can do ordinary drawings as quickly as most men, but these designs can scarcely be regarded in the same light—each Parable I illustrate perhaps a dozen times before I fix [the image]." After completing a design, Millais transferred it to a woodblock coated with Chinese white for skilled engravers to carve. Finally, he reviewed proofs and final adjustments were made before the final printing. The Parable of the Unjust Judge and Importunate Widow appears in Luke:18:1-8, and tells how an unprincipled official eventually granted a poor widow justice because of her persistence. Pre-Raphaelite ideals shaped the combination of detailed naturalism and down-to-earth imagery to produce a work distinctly different than most religious art of the period.
Drawings and Prints
An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.