The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by Millais, Hunt and Rossetti. It arose in opposition to the conservative, academic approach of the Royal Academy of Arts, which upheld the pictorial methods of the 16th-century Italian Renaissance, and to the clichéd nature of Victorian art. The Brotherhood aimed to return to a more spontaneous approach inspired by nature and by the technique and symbolism of the Italian and Flemish Primitive painters.

Anticipating the precepts of later, innovative movements such as Art Nouveau, the Brotherhood’s works are enveloped in a literary atmosphere, depicting historical, social and religious subjects in a modern manner in their quest for a mystical and spiritual mode that would express purity of sentiment.