Pre-Raphaelites, religious & hidden connotations

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/why-were-pre-raphaelites-so-shocking

"Paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites are amongst the best-loved in Tate’s collection. But they were not always considered to be uncomplicatedly beautiful images – on the contrary, when they were first painted in the mid 19th century they were regarded as assaults on the eye, objectionable in terms of their realism and morally shocking.
Charles Dickens was one deprecator. He described the figure of the Virgin Mary in John Everett Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents as a degenerate type, one who was ‘horrible in her ugliness’.
Whereas other artists tended to idealise religious figures, the Pre-Raphaelites painted them with unprecedented realism, attending to peculiarities of physiognomy and character, so people read them in terms of the model rather than in terms of the person that particular model was impersonating. Sometimes the artist’s approach was considered sacrilegious or even blasphemous, as was the case with Millais’s Christ in the House of His Parents.
The artists used bright colours so their pictures stood out against other works in an exhibition, demanding people’s attention. The Pre-Raphaelites were self-publicists, seeking controversy and attention.
A lot of the themes they chose to depict were quite daring for the time – including problematic subjects such as poverty, emigration, prostitution and the double standard of sexual morality in society. Their pictures require a lot of concentrated reading and are so densely encoded with signs and symbols that you have to work hard at deciphering them.

A good example is The Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt. At first glance this could be seen to represent a young married couple or perhaps a brother and sister playing a game. However on closer inspection the different signs cohere to suggest a narrative of fall and possible redemption. The woman is presented in a state if half dress and isn’t wearing a wedding ring, which would imply that she is the man’s mistress. His fallen glove hints at her fate as a discarded mistress, but the light falling into the room from the garden suggests salvation."

The Pre-Raphaelites were heavily criticised for many things concerning religion, including;
- Using a ginger model (Lizzie Siddal) as being ginger was still associated with witchcraft at this time, and using Lizzie as a model for the Virgin Mary and painting true to the model rather than the character of Mary meant they were criticised for being blasphemous
- Also the picture at the top, of Mary and Jesus along with others was criticised because the Pre-Raphaelites had made the religious icons look "ugly", which again is blasphemous and created some problems