Carlo Pellegrini — Samuel Wilberforce, 'Not A Brawler'

Pellegrini's chromolithograph presents Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford and later Winchester, in full episcopal dress: the voluminous white lawn sleeves of a bishop's rochet balloon outward with almost comic buoyancy, while the dark chimere and scarf anchor him solemnly below. His hands are clasped before him in an attitude of pious composure — the very picture of clerical rectitude. The caption 'Not A Brawler' is a dry joke: Wilberforce was the era's most combative Anglican prelate, notorious for the 1860 Oxford debate in which he attempted to ridicule T. H. Huxley over Darwinian evolution, and for relentless ecclesiastical politicking. Pellegrini's exaggerated jowls and beetling brow make the sanctimonious pose land as pure irony, letting Victorian readers enjoy the gap between episcopal dignity and the bishop's well-known appetite for controversy.