 Rwy'n golygu... Oh, yn fwy fyddi. Rwy'n fyddi'n gwych i'r ddraes iaith yma. Rwy'n gweithio'r ffocws gwrthwynt bwysig i'r ffysgau fforydd ymgaredd a gwybodol i'r rhai oedd Ymlaen Ysbryd yn ymddangos Bwysigol. Mae'r ffr�io, mae'n gweithio'r Ysbryd i'r Maddi. Mae'n gydig i'r gweithio'r ysbryd, yma'r Gwyl Mellon ysbryd, o ffr�io'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Felly, mae'n tawr ardal yn brwyg ar draws 40 oes a wedi'u gael y sefydliadau PwG a'i'r sefyllfa. A oedd chi'n ei ddweud o'r ysgrifenn iawn a'r ysgrifenn iawn i'r ysgrifenn iawn i'r ysgrifenn iawn, o'r ysgrifenn iawn i'r ysgrifenn iawn i'r ysgrifenn iawn i'r ysgrifenn iawn, o'r publwysau, o'r pwg honno. Felly, dwi'n rhan o'r gweithio i chi, wrth gwrdd y cyfnod, roedd yna'r cyfleid yn y rhan o'r twyaf ychydig a'u gweithio'r gwaith, a'u gweithio'n gweithio, ac rwy'n cael ei ddweud o'r gweithio ei gweithio'r gwaith yn y cwyn a bocs, sy'n gweithio'n gweithio'r gweithio yng nghymru gweithio'r gweithio'i gweithio ar y cwyn. Mae'r prosesion yn ymgyrch ganwyd i'n meddwl o'r cyfrifio arig. If you would like to use the closed captioning function, you can just click the CC button at the bottom of the page again, and you will be able to enable captions to do that. As ever, I'm going to be supported by the PMC Events Team and Danny Convy, our events assistant, will be on hand in the chat function. So if you've got any questions you want to get in touch with us, just put a comment in the chat as well. I can already see chat happening there as well. So just get in touch with us and we will be really pleased to help you out. And also if you want to find out more about the Paul Mellon Centre and the work we do, just have a look at our web page and you'll find events recordings for lots of past events that we have so you can catch up with past programmes as well as finding out about our research. Fellowships, grunts, our publications and all the other activities that we are involved in. But I think without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Maddie now to give us her paper, which is entitled Victorian Exodus, visualising the Old Testament in the Daseel's Bible Gallery. Maddie, welcome back. We're really delighted to have you here today. I'm really looking forward to your paper. So I'm sure you can't quite hear it, but there's a virtual round of applause to welcome you onto the screen. Thank you so much Sarah for that lovely introduction. I will just get my PowerPoint ready to go. Hopefully you can all see that. Sarah, would you mind just to give me a yes or a thumbs up? Can you see that? Yes, absolutely, that was great. Thank you so much. Yeah, so thank you very much everyone for joining us here today. And I should start by saying as well as having the opportunity to present this research in the ECR network last year, which is such a great opportunity. This research is also supported by a poor man and centre COVID-19 continuity grant. So I'm really grateful to the centre's support on this project, which I'd say about four or five months into now. So yeah, as Sarah very helpfully prefaced, this is work in progress. And I'd be really grateful for discussion and feedback towards the end of the paper. So notwithstanding critics, generally positive reviews of their publication, George and Edward Dalzeal's assessment of their own work was, in fact, the most damning they wrote in their autobiography. Yet with all this vast array of talent, our Bible, commercially speaking, was a dead failure. The balance of the number printed were disposed of at prices, which we will not record here. Thus ended a work begun with the highest of aims over which we spent many years of careful patient labour and several thousands of pounds. The failure of our Bible, better known as the Dalzeal's Bible Gallery, published in 1881, has passed into art historical law as the book end to the golden age of Victorian illustration in the 1860s, as photography superseded this earlier reproductive form. Conceived by George and Thomas, two members of the successful family engraving business, the Dalzeal Brothers Firm, the project aimed to capitalise on the illustrated Bible publishing boom and innovate by commissioning the rising stars of the 1860s art world. However, the project never reached a satisfactory stage of completion, and letters between the various artists and the Dalzeals reveal the tedium of coordinating such an ambitious project, an inconclusive back and forth of extensions, mis-dead lines, half-hearted apologies, which carried on for nearly 20 years. In contrast to the Bible Gallery's commercial block, the Dalzeal Brothers had played a central role in the field of illustrated publications, as Simon Cook, Paul Goldman and Bethan Stevens have revealed, engraving the poems of Tennyson, Edward Lear's book of nonsense, and perhaps most famously, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, as well as collaborating with the Pre-Raphaelites, Royal Academissions and some of the most innovative illustrators of the period. Fittingly, then, the Bible Gallery has received ample attention by art historians and historians of the book as a compendium of the key developments in mid-Victorian illustration. Its contributions by some of the period's leading artists, many of whom were associates or for members of the Royal Academy, including two presidents, has secured its legacy, even if its sales did not. Because of the contributor's notoriety, these studies have focused on individual artists' contribution to the Bible Gallery, and in particular the work of Edward John Pointer, whose detailed orientalist depictions touch on two key Victorian revivalisms. Firstly, that of ancient Egypt, as Stephanie Moser has recently detailed in her study on his work, alongside that of Lawrence Armatadema and Edwin Long, and Assyria, as Donato Esposito has shown in his longstanding and comprehensive research on that subject. Similarly, Laura McCulloch's case study on Ford Maddox Brown's contributions to the Bible Gallery reveal how Brown drew on illustrated books depicting new archaeological discoveries in the Near East to inform his visions of the stories of Joseph, Eglon and Elijah. However, while such studies have provided crucial insight into the work of key Victorian painters and the intersection between archaeology and Orientalism and fine art, one unique element of the Bible Gallery's conception has been overlooked. Although titled a Bible Gallery, which in the context of the period it places a heavy emphasis on the Christian New Testament, the published illustrations are exclusively drawn from the Hebrew Bible. In other words, the 24 books of the Old Testament. Other popular examples of the illustrated Bible genre, such as the best-selling Charles Knight's Pictorial Bible and John Cassell's Illustrated Family Bible, featured a selection of illustrated scripture drawn from both the Old and New Testaments from Genesis to Revelation. Therefore, this publication warrants attention not only for its notable contributors, but also for its exclusive and unique focus on the Old Testament and its own mission of the Christ story. Our predominant understanding of Victorian religious art thus far has largely revolved around images from the New Testament, and in particular the pre-Raphaelites radical re-imaginings of Jesus Christ and the Holy Family. Michaela Giebelhausen has identified the key moments in which the style and moral direction of biblical art were in flux in this period, but throughout her account, the focus remains on the New Testament and Christological painting. In another important study, George Landau raises the importance of typological symbolism, visual signifiers that place foreknowledge of the New Testament in the imagery of the Old but understanding British religious art. Typology was a well-established form of symbolism at this point, while shadowing and making allusions to the story of Christ through animals such as doves and sheep, objects that cast shadows to form crosses or halos, or scenes that invited comparisons between the Old and New religion. This heavy symbolism can be most clearly seen in the work of William Hulman Hunt. Here, for example, is Hulman Hunt's The Scapegoat, an Old Testament subject taken from Leviticus chapter 16, which according to Landau, quote, pre-figured Christ's suffering and redempted death through the imagery of the sacrificial groat sent into the desert on the day of atonement to expunge the community sins. However, I argue that underpinning such typologies was a desire to distinguish the Old Testament as a separate source because of its renewed relevance for Victorian audiences and the possibilities that it held for artists to stimulate religious art in a new direction. As I've already alluded to, archaeology played a key role in reviving the world of the Old Testament through an orientalising lens. Additionally, political and cultural relations between the British Empire and the largely and largely Ottoman controlled territories such as Palestine, Syria and Egypt meant that far greater numbers of people had direct access to the geographies of their faith. In contrast to these largely secular forces, there were religious and spiritual dimensions to the Victorian re-engagement with the Old Testament. I'm interested in exploring what the Old Testament morally, psychically and ethically the Victorians moving away from dominant scholarly narratives around imperial missionary work, the visual culture of so-called muscular Christianity and the pre-Ratholites images of Christ. This case study sits within a larger research project on the visual culture of the Old Testament that seeks to broaden our understanding of Victorian religious art and reveal the diversity and nuance with which artists approached, debated and reimagined the Old Testament. In this paper, I approached the Dalzeo's Bible Gallery in relation to the books of the Hebrew Bible and focus on the story of the Exodus, which makes up a fifth of the 62 illustrations. Such an approach stands in contrast to previous monographic studies and instead reads the contributions of eight artists as a collaborative project to illustrate one of the dominant narratives of the Old Testament. The liberation from slavery in Egypt and the beginnings of the 40 years of wandering in the desert. In doing so, I envisioned the Bible Gallery as a gallery in its architectural definition as a unified exhibition space. Reading the Exodus chronologically also follows the natural viewing pattern, the literal turning of pages as the Bible Gallery was originally intended to be viewed and moving back to a material culture approach of reading the book as an object. This also reveals the intricate networks of collaboration and production inherent in the work of the Dalzeo firm and how the roles of artists, author, engraving, printer and publisher overlapped and were inhabited by multiple makers. Frequently described as the heart of the Hebrew Bible, the Exodus is the foundational story that establishes the Jewish people as a nation. Unsurprisingly, then, it is accorded ample space within the Bible Gallery, the second largest number of illustrations after Genesis, but the longest continuous narrative in contrast to Genesis, which stretches from Cain and Abel to the death of Joseph. This liberal epic that interweaves the drama of overcoming a powerful oppressor with the intricacies of Jewish ritual practice spoke to a contemporary audience as archetypes of history and the law. Central to this epic was Moses, the liberator, lawgiver, the most senior Jewish patriarch revealed in all three Abrahamic fates as a prophet. The illustrators of the Exodus, Simeon Solomon, Edward John Pointer, Thomas Dalzeo, Frederick Layton, Arthur Boyd Houghton, Frederick Richard Pickersdale and Edward Armitage worked separately and approached their subject matter from a range of stylistic and religious viewpoints. However, their work transcended the delineations of a single standalone work as they worked to produce a linear biblical narrative brought together by the Dalzeo's Unifying Project under their banner. Furthermore, the original drawings submitted by the artists were subsequently translated by the firm's engravers and in a sense made the drawings of many artists into the engravings of a single production. From correspondence, there is evidence of negotiation and compromise between the commissioned artists and the Dalzeos on what subjects they would illustrate. For example, Layton selected Moses fearing the Promised Land, David's Charge to Solomon and Balam and his ass from a list compiled by George Dalzeo. Pointer, on the other hand, wrote with a list of suggestions quoting scripture directly and expressing his initial interest in illustrating the Psalms. The majority of the illustrations in the Bible Gallery correspond with scripture directly and in the Exodus, this applies with the exception of pointers, the Israelites and Egypt water carriers, which was an existing watercolour that Edward Dalzeo purchased in 1862 and later included in the Bible Gallery. The Bible Gallery's Exodus begins with Solomon's infant Moses held by his mother and watched over by his sister Miriam and ends with armatages depiction of Moses destroying the tablets after witnessing the Israelites orgy and worship of the golden calf. However, cross-referencing these illustrations with scripture taken from the King James version, the authorised British translation of nearly 300 years, we can see that the illustrations are selective and only covered about two thirds of the entire book. Most notably, the Exodus ends at a moment of high drama, Moses destroying the tablets, yet does not include its resolution, a gap of eight chapters where the Israelites recommit themselves to God, and Moses brings down the tablets from Mount Sinai for a second time, perhaps most famously depicted in Victorian art by John Rogers Herbert in 1864 for the Piers Robing Room at Westminster Palace, and here I'm showing you the painted cartoon version, which is in the National Gallery in Victoria Australia, which is in much better condition than the wall painting to give you an idea of what a dramatic and powerful image of this is. There is also a large gap between chapters 17, the Israelites first days in the desert following their crossing through the Red Sea, to chapter 32, the destruction of the tablets. These chapters contain detailed social and ritual law conveyed through the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments and the Covenant Code, a legal framework that makes up nearly 40% of the Old Testament. Their excision from the Dalzeal's Bible Gallery is likely commercially motivated in part, dietary codes and detailed floor plans for the tabernacle could be perceived as perhaps somewhat uncompelling art subjects. The next illustration after the Exodus in the Bible is Korra swallowed up by Pickersgill from Numbers Skipping Leviticus, a book devoted entirely to laws and prohibitions. However, the importance of the law is not entirely excluded in the Dalzeal's Exodus. The law handed down to Moses, represented by the two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, is depicted here in an illustration by Armitage. A simple, yet powerful symbol referenced frequently in Old Testament art and perhaps of increased interest in a period where cuniform tablets were being deciphered in the nation's museums and Oriental institutes. It's interesting to know that the only illustration depicting the law is its destruction by a vengeful patriarch calling to mind in a contemporary parallel, the British suppression of mutinies in this period, and Armitage's most famous work, Retribution of 1858, which depicts the uprising giving a more contemporary term for it, rather than mutiny. A such emphasis on this set of laws also highlights a clear contrast and its contemporary relevance between Old and New Testaments. While Jesus Christ invokes the Ten Commandments in his debates with the Jewish lawyer and in the Sermon on the Mount, he also proclaims that the most important commandment is to love thy neighbour as thyself, a totally different basis to morality and justice that was not reflected in the violence of the British Empire. The first three and final four illustrations in the Bible galleries, Exodus, take Moses as their central and often single figure. According to Layton, this was an aim expressed by the Dalseals to confine your subjects, to quote confine yourself to subjects expressed with very few figures if possible. Although Halton, who was the most experienced illustrator that illustrates the Exodus section, is allowed to deviate from this in his illustration of Gathering Manor, which includes lots of different figures, so it may well be the Dalseals speaking to painters who are not as experienced with illustration in their wish to have these singular figures. This dictum seems especially relevant to the Exodus narrative, which in the context of the Victorian liberal epic, or equally popular, building a Roman genre, needs a central character through which to express moral growth. Additionally, Moses was perhaps the most important biblical figure after Jesus in the Victorian imagination. As I've already touched upon, the interlinked context of biblical orientalism, tourism and the drive to authenticate the stories of the Bible, elevated the Exodus as one of the primary biblical texts, as it addressed all three in significant ways. Because of this, the Exodus was seen as one of the more firmly, or at least offensively, historicist accounts in the Bible. Victorian Anglican interest in Moses coalesced around Christological readings, evident in cardinal John Henry Newman's sermon, Moses the Type of Christ, published in 1843. On the brink of his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Newman highlights the symmetry of Jesus and Moses' respective missions and their extended and ongoing dialogues with God in the course of their missions. The frontispiece of Cassell's Illustrated Family Bible echoes this symmetry through matching portraits of Moses and Christ at the respective keepers of old and new, bridging the Christian Bible. Scholars have already drawn attention to the secular resonances of the Exodus, and in particular the role Moses played in 19th century radical politics, framing his role as a revolutionary leader enmeshed in a story about oppression, resistance and liberation from institutional power. This had far reaching implications in America during the Civil War, where Moses was an important symbol for black Christians in the midst of their own Exodus. However, in the context of religious art and the Dolls Eels Bible Gallery, Moses and the Exodus offer an alternative to the figure of Christ that allowed for an exploration of the scope of biblical masculinity and authority. In the sermon Cardinal Newman quotes John chapter one verse 17 quote, the law was given by Moses but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. This distinction between the law, although passed down by God as a construct and force and a construct and force by man and grace and truth on the other hand, ineffable qualities which man should aspire to, but continually falls shorter, are at the crux of a consideration of Moses as an alternative to Christ and more broadly the differences, the cultural differences between the old and new testaments. James Eli Adams argues that the prophet character attracted Victorian writers and artists as quote, a masculine role exempted from some of the stresses associated with traditional masculine identity. While Jesus is the son of God who came by grace and truth naturally, Moses is a man who God works through a conduit given the law to them pass on to the Israelites. Moses's humanity, his life as a man, is fully explored through the Exodus and forms a crucial part of the narrative of how he came to lead the Israelites from bondage. The idea of a Christian masculinity was largely an unstable identity in the middle of the 19th century as feminist and queer studies have revealed. An old testament prophet such as Moses provided a framework to explore the ambiguities of masculine persona. In the Bible gallery, this is conveyed through the multiple faces of Moses depicted by no fewer than five artists, a face literally unfixed and transformed between representations, but also each artist attempting to make a representation of the same identity. So we can see here the most looking quite different in each of these, even between the work of the same artist working on different illustrations, but all coming together to kind of form this singular narrative. There are two scenes that illustrate Moses's humanity expressed chiefly through his moral choices, the destruction of the tablets, which I've already discussed, and the slaying of the Egyptian, the second illustration in the narrative by pointer, a chronological leap of nearly 20 years from the first, which we can say on the far left, depicting his biological mother and sister bidding him farewell by Salman. This image is rich in the Orientalist detail found in pointer's illustrations for the Exodus. The scene is littered with pots and baskets, almost certainly recorded on his frequent sketching trips to the British Museum. A sphinx in the farm background appears to look over the brick wall to watch the unfolding scene, a touch of gallows humor from the incorrigibly Egyptomanic artist. Its composition shows off its creators awareness of contemporary art, once again recalling Armitage's retribution through an inverse composition of foe being grabbed by the net and soon to be dispatched with a weapon. It also recalls fellow Bible Gallery contributed forward Maddox Brown's work, similarly sticky with the politics of labour and fomenting class warfare. These reference demonstrate how deftly pointer moved between media, deploying the formal language of fine art in illustration and how the spectacle of Orientalist detail was underpinned by the moral considerations of contemporary religious art. In this scene, Moses, still a cherished son of the Pharaoh's daughter, witnesses an Egyptian beating an enslaved Hebrew and feeling a sense of kinship perhaps for the first time, takes vengeance by murdering the Egyptian and hiding his body. The scene is visceral, Moses grabs at the Egyptian's neck and the tensed musculature of his forearm reveals his unwavering grip. In the other hand, he grabs hold of a mallet, a grisly detail of pointer's own creation as the scripture does not in fact reveal the method of murder. Although a type of justice has been served in this instance, there is the suggestion that the act is ultimately futile without the intervention of a higher moral authority. Behind Moses, the Hebrews continue to toil and subsequently endure bondage for another 40 years, and we can see in the far background there, you can see my mouse there, we've got the other enslaved Hebrews continuing to work despite this scene unfolding in the foreground. This type of morally ambiguous, this is the type of morally ambiguous act that distinguishes the old and new testament for many Victorian Christians and also draws together this idea of an alternative masculinity, an alternative type of Christian masculinity as well through this ambiguous act. A moment of violence that at its core violates one of the 10 commandments that Moses would eventually deliver to the people, but equally an action that sets into motion divine events that will culminate in Moses being chosen as prophet and deliverer, therefore retroactively sanctioning the murder by God. By way of a conclusion then, which is, as I said, by no means conclusive, as I'm still thinking through many elements of this case study and would welcome your feedback. The Dalzeal's Bible Gallery gives us a focused insight into mid Victorian artists conception of the Old Testament as a distinct category within Christian art. Whilst I've chosen to narrow that viewpoint even further in this brief presentation by only focusing on the Exodus narrative, the Bible Gallery visualizes a number of other books from the Old Testament, the selection once again emphasizing for scholars which particular narrative spoke to Victorian audiences. And I'd like to give a brief sense of the rest of the Bible Gallery and in doing so highlight other areas that the project seeks to address. Profits are key characters throughout the Bible Gallery and there are illustrations featuring Joseph, Samson, Elijah, Job and Daniel. Represented along these archetypes of biblical Jewish masculinity are the women of the Old Testament, including Rebecca, Naomi and Esther. And although I didn't get time to mention it in the scope of this paper, Miriam, the illustration in the centre there, again by pointer, again that's a Miriam comes from the Exodus section, was considered by critics to be the stand out success of the entire publication. An aestheticist illustration which approached the rhythmic abstraction later seen in the painting of artists such as Albert Moore. While Cook argues that this work is in the service to an agenda of art for art's sake, I would argue that this works confluence of beauty, music and dancing set during the Israelites first moments of freedom amalgamates a transcendent religious fervour in evangelizing sensory experience which has previously only been attributed to hunt paintings of the Holy Lands. As the Bible Gallery moves past the Torah, or the first five books of the Old Testament, the later books are represented by fewer or even single images, a sign in part of the faltering commercial venture. Nevertheless, certain illustrations show how deeply read and theologically knowledgeable the Dalseyl's Bible Gallery contributors were. Notable examples include the obscure parable of the boiling pot illustrated by Edward Byrne Jones on the right, whose theological experience and knowledge of kind of the debts of religious art is now just only being uncovered by new research. There's also illustrations such as the Flight of Adramelach by Arthur Merge, resplendent with neo- Assyrian details, which in fact conceals the little known story of a child sacrificing ancient Semetic God from the Book of Kings. The Exodus, according to the Dalseyl's Bible Gallery, is an impactful example of 19th century religious art that tells a different story to the so-called Victorian crisis of faith. Its illustrations made by a cross-section of the period's most significant artists demonstrate the way the Old Testament provided insight at this juncture in religious culture that deliberately differed from the story of Christ. In this small segment of the Dalseyl's Bible Gallery, key themes such as the law, history and biblical masculinity are explored from a range of viewpoints and the complementary nature of the gallery allows for dissonance to emerge and coexist. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much, Maddie, and have a moment to draw a breath, have some water, and we shall all start to think of questions and comments from that really interesting paper, and it was just really wonderful also looking at the images. I mean, sometimes the screen flattens, but it's interesting when you're looking at print culture as well on screen, on screen, and through various stages of reproduction, but actually when you're talking about movement and the sort of sensory experience of those prints, I could really feel the depths of those lines and the quite interesting contrast between light and dark as well sort of how the print technique is used to kind of communicate that message. It was really interesting to see the materiality, you know, through your presentation. One thing I just to get our conversation started as well, I wanted to ask you about the title of a Bible Gallery as well, and if you could tell us more about that and as particularly I'm thinking obviously of the word gallery. And what that was, how that would have signified to a contemporary Victorian audience, and whether that kind of correspondence with gallery going and viewing works in a gallery was meant to be there or whether that's something I'm sort of reading into it from my position in the 21st century. Tell us a bit more about the title, whether that was unique or was it used by other projects of this kind as well. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that the title is really important. Yeah, because this genre is more broadly known as the kind of ever illustrated Bible genre, and you can see Castells and Charles Knight they call it, you know, an illustrated Bible, a pictorial Bible, but yeah, I do see the Dalseals making a distinction in calling it a gallery. It's interesting. This is very commonly one of the kind of common themes that comes up in discussion of this publication is the fact that it kind of has two lives, the original project in the 1860s, when they were commissioning these largely kind of up and coming unknown, new to the scene artists pointer late, you know, they're very kind of young men in their mid 20s, you know, only kind of associates of the Royal Academy at this point, and the stage at which it's published, which is 1881, you know, nearly 20 years later, when these artists are far more established than the Dalseals feel that they kind of have to put something out to recoup their losses effectively and interesting in that second sort of life that it has the idea of the gallery I think takes on as a new significance as well as also looking at the work of now very famous artists so I wonder if this kind of title of a gallery is as potent when they're less known and less kind of household names in terms of kind of for an exhibition going public as opposed to much later when they've got at this point. One president of the Royal Academy and in the next 10 years another with pointer as well but yeah absolutely that's why I kind of have this perspective of looking at a multiple artists work together as opposed to focusing on singular collections of illustrations most of the contributors made more than one illustration, but to look at multiple artists together again I think evokes this idea of the gallery that you move around and you're looking at the work of multiple artists you know these kind of cyclical works you know burn Jones he works and kind of cycles you know of kind of, you know our theory and legends and things like that but this is a different kind of working through a kind of cyclical narrative so again I think that's that's where the idea of the gallery comes into. Great thank you that's really interesting and we often have like a lot of other you know postgraduate students joining joining us for these research lunches or people who are thinking about doing postgrad research and I wonder if you could just tell us how you became interested in this subject like how did this start and you know how did you find. This just give us a bit of a sense of your research journey. Yes, I, I, I finished my PhD I had my vibe and literally it's probably the last normal thing that I did in middle of February 2020. That this is really my first sort of ECR kind of research project. And so in some ways I think it very much has its origins in my PhD work which is very much about kind of British Orientalist visual culture I focus my thesis was on Frederick Layton. So obviously we've got Layton in here and that whole kind of cast of characters so certainly looking for you know an area that I knew and was comfortable. But where I think I'm kind of building and branching out is yeah kind of interest in religious art certainly is something new. Yeah and I guess kind of yeah my my original interest in kind of Orientalism and these kind of archaeological discoveries happening in the Near East in the Ottoman Empire things like that. That kind of led me to you know looking at kind of this Orientalist religious art when these artists were travelling to the Holy lands to kind of get these authentic depictions of the scenes of the Bible. And starting to think a little bit more about that and then from that I guess yeah the kind of looking then for a unique angle within all of that. So it's some good original research is yeah that I think yeah the Old Testament as its own category hasn't really been paid attention to quite as much. As I said the Delzils Bible Gallery is just one case study. I'm also looking at some kind of Judaica some silver sculpture, which was gifted to Moses Montefuri who's very kind of senior Anglo Jewish figure in the period. I'm also looking at some kind of more paintings particularly of David as this kind of King figure. I'm also exploring this idea of Old Testament masculinity and how that differed from depictions of Jesus. And also images of Eve in particular by GF Watts as well so also biblical femininity on the other side of that and kind of the first woman and then how that plays into kind of contemporary debates about womanhood feminism things like along that line. Yes that's how I came to it and where it is and yeah as you can see it's an early stage but it's exciting. That's really interesting to hear. I think we've got loads of questions which is obviously testament to the richness of your paper. So I'll read some of these out. Some people I know and you know and I might see if they want to come and ask you their question. We can promote them and you can hear them because I always think it's you know webinars are a little bit impersonal sometimes that you feel like you're broadcasting into the void because you can't really see other people apart from me. So we can sometimes we can hear people ask questions so I might ask a few people they actually want to speak to you because that just gives you a sense of community and a bit of feedback. But some people are anonymous so I shall just read their questions for you because we've got some really interesting things coming up here. So the first one the first question from an anonymous attendee us. Could you say more about both the visual continuities and the visual disruptions between the different images of Moses in the Exodus narrative. Did the fact that these images were produced by different artists mean that the pictorial narrative was not a coherent or a rhythmic one. Yeah I think that's really interesting and that kind of slide that I showed of Moses's different faces I think really kind of highlights. Yeah those those dissonances those differences between the illustrations and yes I said these artists are kind of coming from a number of different kind of stylistic and also religious of you points from kind of the very atheistic to you know people to you know male painters who are very interested in religious art and religion. So on the one hand I think you've got the kind of pointer illustrations and so he does the six out of the 13. Who's very interested in the kind of Orientalist sort of depiction and so you kind of get Moses in this slang of the Egyptian he's got this kind of necklace on which looks you know like it's just been, you know found at some archaeological site and you know kind of headband very similarly. And then you get kind of images like Moses destroying the tablets which I think very much draws on a kind of previous generations depiction of religious art so people like William Dice for example. Very much kind of reminiscent of his work the Nazarenes as well. So I think you get a kind of confluence of the kind of early 19th century and earlier periods of religious art and how that comes to inform these illustrations as well. Yeah I am also I think what I'm trying to do with this work is to bring together more of those similarities, rather than the differences. Yeah so kind of again looking through how this kind of tells the story of Moses is a man and what kind of lessons of Victorian reader might have taken away from that so I think yeah well. I think the differences have been well highlighted in the scholarship before I am interested in bringing together some more of those similarities. Jason Edwards has asked a question. Jason, if you are there would you be happy to ask Maddie your question because I'm sure she'd like to hear your voice. Annie I don't know whether you can, oh Jason's coming in. Yeah. Hello Jason. Hi hello both. Pleasure to be here with you both and see your faces. So Maddie, I really like the paper as you would predict and I said I was really struck with your account of the kind of hebraism of the 1860s when we're used to thinking of the kind of 1860s as the decade of aestheticism right, the swinging 1860s. And this is a question for you and for me in some ways as well I think so why do you think that we've been so distracted by aestheticism and why is it that this kind of hebraism is now coming to our attention. Yeah that's really interesting. I know you and I have had conversations about a more wider scholarly turn towards the kind of significance of religious art as, yeah, religious and theologically interesting and impactful as opposed to I think a largely kind of secular art history thus far, which has read religious art so I think we can see a kind of turn towards that. You know that big conference on kind of Edward Byrne Jones as I mentioned a lot of the new research coming out there kind of resurgence in research on dice as well figures like that. But yeah interestingly also yeah I think there's also great work being done to kind of map and uncover yeah the significance of of the Jewish world and its intersections with both the British Empire and kind of Britain the fabric of British life more broadly so yeah the Montefuris is kind of a very kind of key and central family to that. You know the Solomon's to I think that the kind of again the kind of religious dimensions but the kind of theologically significant dimension so yeah I just think. I guess it's just more a more broad kind of scholarly turn towards the religious as opposed to as I said a kind of very secular reading of religious art thus far so that was a bit waffle a but fully got that. Thank you that was great. Thanks Jason and actually someone called Beth has asked you a question about how the Victorian Jewish community might have used these images so Beth you probably can express this better than I can. So again I wonder whether you would be happy to to come and pose this question to Maddie and just kind of open up a discussion around around this area for us. Right so I picked up on the fact that you you mentioned how sort of excluded the new testament or Christian imagery. So yeah my question is, would that mean then that the intended audience or Jews is much known about that, whether that might have been the case. Well it includes the fact that realize Jews traditionally don't use images in their worship, but Simeon Solomon himself was a Jew so maybe that was showing that there's nothing religiously wrong with creating visuals to accompany the Hebrew scriptures. So that's a really a day as you can see I was just furiously writing down because that's a really really interesting angle that I haven't actually yet had the chance to consider. But yeah this is so this in contrast to the kind of illustrated Bibles, Castells Knights all of those, which were very affordable and and quite accessible to a wide range of audiences and Rachel Chikulski I hope I've said of surname correctly has done some great work on this in her most recent book, the Dalseel Bible Gallery on the other hand was very expensive and would have been restricted to to a kind of very upper class kind of budget however Jewish people in this period was starting to transcend some of those class barriers, you know, again the Montefuris, the Rothschilds, you know other Anglo Jewish families and prominent positions in society were actually kind of attaining that economic status in this period so wouldn't necessarily have been excluded in the same way that to be fair a vast majority of the Jewish population in London in the East End in particular or in other cities across the UK may well have been but yeah I would be really interested to see perhaps if if the Jewish Chronicle or other similar publications were periodicals whether they might have had a review of the Bible Gallery as a kind of yet publication of the Old Testament and whether they would have addressed yet this very kind of contentious issue which is still kind of debated now in kind of religious circles about yeah illustration and visual representation to accompany Jewish scripture so yeah it's a really interesting question and I will definitely be pursuing that thank you very Thank you so much for coming on and we've got also just read these comments out to you as well and Amanda Jane Darren says there were also influential European precedents to the Bible Gallery and she said I'm thinking particularly of schnoir I hope I've said that correctly and other German graphic artists and she said the Dalzeal's Arabian Knights is an interesting precursor again using a range of artists and graphic styles so I'm sure you're thinking about that network of imagery imagery and precursors in a kind of wider European visual culture as well. And then we've got a comment from the PMC's own mark Hallot mark, would you like to come and talk to Maddie and and ask your question to her live. Yeah, that'd be great. Can you hear me okay Sarah and Maddie. This was hi there, it'd be great to hear a bit more of your thoughts about the ways in which that the imagery of Moses and Christ played off each other in this period I was really struck by that frontispiece that you showed with them sit sort of standing side by side. And I was particularly interested about in the question of whether you found that the one pictorial persona or persona ever undermines or troubles the other you know that it's not always a relationship that's a straightforwardly complimentary or harmonious one whether in the image that you've been looking at you see the ways in which the one one set one persona might be seen to undermine or trouble the other. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, so I think in particular with the with the castells frontispiece and this is that that's a very common kind of template almost in which you would see a kind of the Christian Bible represented yeah Moses is almost always this representative of the old, and particularly as the lawgiver so again of course the 10 commandments you know very closely related to him symbolically and then yeah Jesus on the other. And interestingly in the castells I'm just looking at he's got kind of it's the wine and the bread that kind of represent him works the 10 commandments for for Moses yet I think it's really interesting that there's almost a kind of partnership suggested there this kind of working together to kind of bridge the Christian Bible when of course I'm at a kind of more straightforward reading that we may have kind of had previously was that kind of Christ sits above and kind of supersedes all other kind of figures in in in the Bible, including kind of profits yeah he's this kind of next sort of level. But yeah I think the castells and other examples of this do a really interesting job of setting up a different dynamic and a different relationship to the two. And yeah again I think the point is slaying the Egyptian. I think that's one particular representation of Moses. He's almost got a kind of wild look about and of course he's much younger. So in a kind of Christological kind of reading we've got one image of him as a baby, and then it jumps forward almost 20 years to this moment of slaying the Egyptian. Then he, he kind of goes into exile in Midian and the next time we see him is nearly 30 years after that so he's a 50 year old man at this point. So this kind of image of him in his, his youth essentially where he kind of is in this act of murder looks kind of wild. I think does really trouble then these later depictions when all of a sudden he does kind of have the serene kind of profit like this. So, and that's really interesting and I think actually yeah I might want to kind of come back and look at those a bit more and actually what that pointer image does to then these kind of three or four singular images of Moses that we get directly after. Thank you Mark that's that's really helpful. Great, thank you. Thanks Mark. We've got another question here, Stephen Duckworth I don't Stephen, would you like to come and ask your your question to and put it to to marry directly. Yes, thank you. So, sort of just as a comment first the cast cells engraving actually shows Moses with the bronze serpent which is a healing image and crisis for good shepherd, which is also perhaps a bit closer to Moses and some of your comments have pointed out but my main point is that I'd be interested in the wider project you referred to because I've done research in British Library on Old Testament from about the 1830s onwards for their illustrations related to have a inspired pot as in Staffordshire to produce ceramic figures of Old Testament figures as well as but as you know there was a flood of such bibles before Dalseel and they came in later still the actual publication, but I wondered if the wider project is looking at Victorian secular and religious thought development over the whole half century. I would say it is more towards kind of religious thought particularly because I think the secular side of it you know that again as I said mentioned the kind of archaeological context Orientalism biblical tourism I think has been ground really well and interestingly covered but I'm interested in what this kind of engagement through imagery meant to a kind of to a religious person to a person who necessarily in this period wasn't having the kind of Victorian crisis of faith or if they were what was it about the Old Testament that either verified and strengthen things or kind of put them into dispute and kind of made them you know even more unstable and unsound so I think yeah it's more about this kind of religious and spiritual and theological dimension of this Old Testament imagery but yeah that's really interesting that Staffordshire figure sound really fascinating I will go away and have a look at those absolutely. Great, thank you very much Stephen for coming on and in the interest of time I'll just I'll read you another question that's come in here from Clive Kennard who says, given that your specialism is on Leighton or you've done a lot of work on Frederick Leighton and could you tell us why you didn't tell us about Leighton's figure of Moses? Overlooking Canaan, is there anything that you can tell us about Leighton's depictions such as carrying the gates of Gaza which are more visually striking than most in their strong outline or foreshortening so perhaps you could tell us a bit more about those and evoke them. Yeah I know well it was yes Clive it was very painful not to include Leighton more centrally of course but interesting so Moses views the Promised Land the scripture that references actually from numbers so just falls outside of my scope of the Exodus for this paper and similarly carrying the gates which you mentioned as well the Leighton that is in the Exodus is death of the first born and interestingly a really kind of interesting work very kind of renaissance influence throughout it but yeah interestingly one that doesn't include the figure of Moses in it so yeah unfortunately fell out of the scope of this paper but yeah I think so he's another person who's kind of interested very much in this theme of biblical masculinity through the kind of figures of Samson in particular and the kind of strength of Samson fighting the lion is a particularly kind of powerful and visceral image but in a lot of ways with the exception of death of the first born which I think is a wonderfully rich and powerful image which I would like to kind of get in the larger scope of this get into in more depth. A lot of the his works for the Bible gallery are quite simple actually and standing quite a contrast to some of his painting and in the letters you can certainly see some frustration with having to adapt this work for engraving similarly he also did some illustrations for George Elliot's Romola as well and kind of similarly express frustration so yeah so it wasn't it wasn't for the kind of line of Victorian art and seems to be good everything he puts his hand to this is actually one project where he kind of has some struggles and I think that they are actually evident in some of the finished product so yeah so it might be interested to look at not only the kind of failure of the Bible gallery but maybe the failures of some of the illustrators as well but yes and some interesting examples by Layton yeah but just not within the scope of this very brief paper. Fantastic and and just tell us a bit more then I asked you about the prehistory of this topic and how you came to it but what about you know what where do you envisage it and you know going and what are your plans for this research. Yeah so yeah as I said there are 62 illustrations in the in the kind of original 1881 version of the Bible gallery there is a slightly later version in the 1890s the dolls eels end up selling a copyright. For the Bible gallery again unfortunately because the firm eventually goes under and at that point some new illustrations are included I'm going to stick to this kind of original version and I'm really interested in kind of exploring this idea of the prophet figure because as I mentioned there are quite a few prophets depicted and I think in terms of kind of this strong masculine ideal you know if we're thinking about in the ways in which the Old Testament is is different to the new. These kind of figures stand in the most kind of contrast to the kind of single figure of of Jesus so yeah I think I'd like to kind of take more of a focus on on the prophets. So that's why I kind of highlighted Moses is kind of the most important in this instance but yeah I'd like to look at the others and also kind of look at as I mentioned kind of the women of the dolls eels Bible gallery as well. So their kind of status so Miriam kind of Moses's sister her kind of appearance in the very first illustration as a young girl in Solomon's image kind of bidding. The baby Moses goodbye to this rather kind of lyrical and wonderful sort of image of her dancing and singing the song of Miriam as they're on the shores on the other side of the Red Sea so then kind of yeah kind of comparison of kind of gender and representations through this figure of the prophet and then yeah these kind of different characters and roles that the women of the Bible gallery and habits yeah. Is this a book project is it an exhibition project. Oh gosh yeah hopefully a book project is what I'd like to see it as yeah and yeah I've got plenty of work to do but yeah I'm slowly but surely making a start on some of the other case studies as well so it's coming together. Great well thank you so much for sharing that with us Maddie. We had so many questions and I you know hope that was really helpful for you as well and well so nice to hear people who are you know tuning in to listen to your research and so yeah thank you so much for that really wonderful paper and giving us that snapshot into into your project. And if people have any other comments they want to pass back to us after the zoom webinar has ended, you can always get in touch with the center by emailing us at our info at paul-melan-center.ac.uk it's a real mouthful but Danny has put it in the chat actually she's put the events email so that's even better and if you've got any further comments you want to make or we can pass on to Maddie and we can do it through that email. So that's just to say thank you so much to all our audience members for joining us and for such brilliant and engaged questions and. You can access the recording several people have asked about that as well to hope that their students can watch it after the event. And other people who couldn't join us today so you'll find that on the recording section of the Paul melon website, and we hope you'll come back for other events we've got more research launches throughout this term. Next week, the Paul melon lectures kick off that also going to be virtual events and Gabrielle Finaldi the director of the National Gallery will be giving the first in the series of lectures by international museum directors he'll be talking about the museum and gallery today so that'll be a really exciting and interesting series of lectures which we are co hosting with our partner institution the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. And if you're interested in print culture and graphic arts, then we've got a conference series that will be right up your street that begins on the second of November. And that's going to be a series of events and under the title under the umbrella title of graphic landscape, and that actually will be looking at series and print so will be a very topical for today. And I hope you'll come back and join us for for those events at a future date, but thanks again, Maddie, it's been really great to have a share lunch with you virtually. We can go and have some real sustenance now but we've had lots of intellectual sustenance thanks to you so thanks ever so much and yeah have a good rest of the day to everyone who's been joining us today. Bye.