Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois

Following the publication of Thomas Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches, with elucidations (1845), Cromwell had been regularly portrayed in a heroic light in British art. His actions with regard to the Vaudois had been illustrated several times. Charles Rowley commissioned Brown to create the picture.

I commissioned him to paint for me the fine picture now at Manchester, "Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois." I wanted a picture of John Milton, and the result is this masterpiece: Cromwell, Milton, and Andrew Marvell, who was then secretary to the blind poet.^[3]

Brown's painting differs from earlier versions of the scene because of its highly dynamic composition designed to stress the relationship between Cromwell as a man of action and Milton as a powerful intellectual force, with Marvell energetically poised to execute their combined wills. In this respect the painting is a development of the central theme of Brown's earlier painting Work, but in this case emphasises the work of a "power elite" rather than ordinary manual labour. Cromwell's pose, splayed across the desk, is a development of earlier imagery in which Cromwell had been depicted as a rough or unceremonious figure.^[4] His contained energy is emphasised by the precariously balanced desk, supported on a curved base with small stabilising feet. Milton's gesture is similarly transitory, finger raised, while the cropped, half-obscured figure of Marvell holds his pen ready waiting.

• List of paintings by Ford Madox Brown