Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 10.djvu/358

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MILLER


310


MILLET


as the Irvingites, Monnoiis, Advt-ntists, adopted both apocalyptic and millcnarian views, expect inn I lie re ' turn of (Jhrist and the establishiiieiit of His kiiit^ddiu at an early date. .Some t'athuhc tlieologians of the nineteenth century championed a moderate, modified millenarianism, especially in connexion with their explanations of the Apocalypse; jis PiVgani (The End of the World, ISoli), Schneider (Hie ehiliasti.sche Dok- triii, lS,j'J), Hohling (Krklaruni; der Apokalypse des hi. Iohanne.s, 1895; Auf nach Sion, 1!K)1), Rougeyron Chabauty (.\venir de I'Eglise catholique selon le Plan Divin, 1S90).

CoKKODl, Kritische Geschichte des Chiliasmus, IV (Zurich, 1794); Atzbeugeh, Die christliche Eschatologie in den Stadien ihrer Offenbaruna (Freiburg im Br., 1890); Idem. Geschichte der christlichen Eschatologie in der vomicdnischen Zeit (ibid., 1896); Chiapelli, Le idee millenarie dei Cristiani (Naples, 18SS) ; Ekmoni, Les Phases successipcn de I'Erreur viillhiariste in Revue des Questions Hist. (Oct., 1901); Gry, Le MilU-nnrisme dans sesoriqines et son develop pement (Paris, 1904); The Millen- nium in The Spectator, LXXXIV (London, 1899), 625; for modern Protestant views, cf. Briggs, in the Lutheran Quar- terly Review (Gettysburg, 1879); Pre-millennial Essays of the Prophetic Conference (Chicago, 1879); Riggle, The Kingdom of God and the One Thousand Years Reign (Moundsville, 1904); Brown in H.^stixgs, Dictionary of the Bible (s. v.); for the Jewish view, cf. Drummond, The Jewish Messiah (London, 1877); VON ScHURER, History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, II (London, 1885-87), ii, 178 sqq.

J. P. KiRSCH.

Miller, Ferdinand von, b. at Furstenfeldbruck, 1S13; d. at Munich, 1SS7. He laboured for the de- velopment of the bronze founders' craft and the uplifting of the artistic profession, far beyond the borders of Bavaria. After a sojourn at the academy and a preliminary engagement at the royal brass foundry, he went to Paris in 1833, where he learnt from Soyer and Blus the varied technique necessary to him in the manipulation of bronze. He also vis- ited England and the Netherlands, and after his return worked under his teacher anil uncle Stiglmayr, whom the Crown Prince Ludwig had induced to devote him- self to bronze foundry work and to the establishment of the Munich foundry as a state institution. Miller soon took his uncle's place, and upon the death of the latter was appointed inspector of the workshop. He soon won for it a world-wide reputation, anil for himself a fortune and position of influence. He was a gifted artist, a quiet worker, skilful in negotiation and en- tirely a self-made man. The casting of the Bavaria, one of the world's greatest representations in bronze (1844-55), especially brought him great fame. Com- missions came to him from far and near. Thus he cast not merel^y the statues of Herder, Goethe, and Schiller for Weimar, but also the figures of Duke Eberhard in Stuttgart, of Berzelius in Stockholm and two Washington monuments by Mills and Craw- ford in Boston and Richmond. The gate of the capital in Washington is also by him. The Munich exhibition of art and the art crafts in the year 1S76, which resulted so successfully for the art industries in (jermany, was largely Miller's work. Two years before he had been elected to the directorate of the society of art industries. He understood not only how to interest the influential classes in the pro- ductions of rising arts and crafts, but also to win over artists to a general exhibition of German art in alliance with the art handicrafts. When he had brought architects, sculptors and painters into harmony with the lesser arts he found it possible to bring about an exliibition on an entirely new plan. Drawing rooms, cabinets, boudoirs, sitting rooms and chapels were arranged so as to form in their grouping an harmonious whole by having art and trade appliances put into the place for which they were in- tended. Where this was not possible, a partition or a wall would be placed with picturesque effect in some adjoining room. .\s a result art became, especially in Munich, the mistress of industry. Miller forthwith established a center of exhibition and sale for the


society, and procured himself a home especially tor the social intercourse of artists and art craftsmen. The result w:is an tmexpected rise of the art industries. I'erdiiiand Miller junior followed in his father's foot- steps, and is known in America by the figures on the Sinton fountain in Cincinnati (at (he unveiling of which he was much honoured), as well as by the statues of Shakespeare and von Humboldt in St. Louis, and finally by the war memorial at ( liarleston.

Peoht, Gesch. d,'r M iiiichimr KiinsI (iMurii.h. ISNS); M , i.i.Ell, Universalhandbuch von M iinchtn; Dcutschts Kunsthlntt for 1850, 1853, 1856, etc.

G. GlETMANN.

Miller, William J. See Transvaal, Vicariate Apostolic of.

Millet, Jean-Francois, French painter; b. at Gruchy, near Cherbourg, 4 October, 1S14; d. at Barbizon, 20 January, 1875. This great painter of peasants was a son of peasants: he himself began life as a tiller of the soil, and he never lost touch with it. But though a family of rustics, the Millets were far removed from rusticity of manners: they were serious folks, profouinlly pious, a strange stock of Catholic Puritans whose stern sentiments of religion, handed down from generation to generation, gave them something like an aristocratic character; they were incapable of mean ideas. The grandmother — the soul of that household — was an assiduous reader of Pascal, Bossuet, Nicole, and Charron. Young Jean-Franfois was reared by the parish priest in the cult of Vergil and the Bible ; the " Georgics " and the Psalms, which he read in Latin, were his favourites. Later on he became acquainted with Burns and Theocritus, whom he preferred even to Vergil. His imagination never lost these majestic impressions. Nature and poetry, the open country and Holy Scrip- ture, shared equally in the shaping of his genius. Of that genius the young ploughman gave the first signs at the age of eighteen. He studieil at C'herbourg under Langlois, a pupil of Baron Gros, and the Munici- pal Council gave him a pension of 600 francs to go and finish his studies in Paris. There he entered the atelier of Delaroche in 1837; but he spent most of his time in the Louvre, with the masters of bygone ages.

The primitives of Italy enraptured him by their fervour: Fra Angelico filled htm with visions. The colourists were little to his taste; he remained un- moved in the presence of Velazquez. But then again, he liked Ribera's vigour and Murillo's homespun grace. Among the Frenchmen, the beauty of Le Sueur's sentiment touched him, Le Brun and Jouvenet he thought "strong men". But his favourite mas- ters were the masters of "style" — Mantcgna, Michel- angelo, and Poussin: they haunted him all his life. Poussin's "Letters" were his everyday food, and "I could look at Poussin's pictures forever and ever ", he writes, "and always learn something". His con- temporaries, Delacroix excepted, moved him but little and for the most part to indignation. Millet's early works — those of his Paris period (1837-50) — are ex- tremely different from those which made him famous. They are now very rare but ought not to be forgotten : from the point of view of art, they are probably his most pleasing and felicitous productions; in them the painter's temperament voices itself most naturally before his "conversion", without method, without ulterior purpose. They are generally idylls — ec- logues — thoroughly rural in feeling, with a frank, noble sensuality, the artLst's Vergilian inspiration finding expression in little pagan scenes, antique bas-reliefs, and neutral subjects, such as "Women bathing", "Nymphs", "Offerings to Pan", and so on — thoughts but slightly defined in forms as definite as sculpture.

Some of these pieces are the most Poussinesque things in modern art. In them the young painter already appears as an accomplished stylist, with a