Cymon and Iphigenia

Millais's Cymon and Iphigenia of 1847, painted when he was eighteen, depicts the story from Boccaccio's Decameron in which Cymon, a brutal clown, is transformed into a civilized man by the sight of the beautiful sleeping Iphigenia. The subject — beauty's civilizing power — was a favorite of academic painters, and Millais's treatment demonstrates his extraordinary precocity as a history painter. The painting won the Royal Academy's gold medal for history painting, establishing his reputation as the most technically gifted student of his generation. It reveals the classical academic training that he would shortly transform through Pre-Raphaelite radical revision.

The painting demonstrates the young Millais's exceptional technical ability and his command of academic figure painting conventions. The careful rendering of the figures and the pastoral setting show the solid foundation from which his Pre-Raphaelite revolution would emerge.