Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois

Painted in 1877, 'Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois' depicts Oliver Cromwell interceding on behalf of the Protestant Waldensian communities of Piedmont, who suffered severe persecution by the Duke of Savoy in 1655 — an event that prompted John Milton's famous sonnet 'On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.' Cromwell's diplomatic pressure successfully secured better treatment for the Vaudois, and this act of Protestant international solidarity was celebrated in British Protestant historical memory. Ford Madox Brown's interest in Cromwell as a historical subject reflects the Victorian reassessment of the Interregnum period and Cromwell's specific reputation as a champion of Protestant liberty and parliamentary governance. The Manchester Art Gallery's collection of this work situates it within Brown's broader engagement with British history as a subject for serious painting.

The historical subject required Brown to engage with seventeenth-century costume and setting with the same documentary care he brought to other historical subjects. The composition centers on Cromwell's figure in a posture suggesting the active exercise of power — not military action but diplomatic intervention, the pen rather than the sword. The treatment of the supporting figures in the scene establishes the political context of a court or council chamber.