The Escape of a Heretic, 1559 is an 1856âÂÂ57 oil painting by the English artist John Everett Millais, depicting a man disguised as a friar rescuing his lover, a heretic woman who has been imprisoned by the Spanish Inquisition. It was displayed in 1898 with a fictional quotation that suggested it was based on a historical event in Valladolid, Spain, in 1584.
Millais got the idea for the painting when he and his new wife Effie Gray were visiting Mr W. Stirling at Keir in Scotland, in the autumn of 1855. Stirling had a collection of material relating to the Spanish Inquisition, and Millais intended the painting to be a pendant (companion piece) to A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge of 1851âÂÂ52.
Millais worked on the picture in the winter of 1856 in Perth, Scotland, at the same time he was working on ' (1856âÂÂ57) and in the spring of 1857, when he and Effie had taken rooms in Savile Row, London. In Scotland, Millais used a staircase in Balhousie Castle, Perth, for the painting, while the model for the monk/lover was a young gamekeeper in the service of Mr Condie.
The painting was shown at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1857, along with two other paintings by Millais.
The painting hung in a special Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, held between January and March 1898, which featured many collected works of the late Millais (catalogue number 49). At the time it was the property of Sir William Houldsworth, Bart., M. P.. It was displayed at the exhibition with the following text:
The painting was exhibited in the Nineteenth Century Paintings from the Museo De Arte De Ponce, Puerto Rico, Fundacion Luis A. Ferré exhibition held at the Hayden Gallery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 17 May to 8 June 1974.
It was exhibited in the Victorian Masterpieces from the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 8 October 2022âÂÂ4 February 2024.
The painting has been in the collection of the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce since at least 1974, object number 65.0568.