"The case of Jean-François Millet's 1859 painting 'The Angelus' is one of the strangest in all art," said Laura Cumming in The Observer . Depicting two peasants pausing work in a field, called to prayer by a bell from a distant church spire, it shows the pair "heads bent in prayer, bodies haloed by golden evening rays" as shadows "lengthen over the spreading fields". This small, "modest" image has been held up as "the ideal image of la France profonde "; it has attracted endless, far-fetched critical scrutiny; it has repeatedly shattered auction records; and has been "used to advertise everything from cheap cigarettes to camembert". It marks a historical turning point – when the Industrial Revolution led to "a steady exodus of peasants from French farms to the city", and a nostalgia fo

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