Focus on Isabella (Millais painting) and explain the Hidden phallic symbols.
In 2012, British art curator Carol Jacobi published an article about sexual symbols in the painting. They were all on or near the character in the front left, who is stretching out his leg and using a nutcracker. The shadow on the table near his crotch area, his leg, and the nutcracker were all argued to represent a phallus. Jacobi said: "The shadow is clearly phallic, and it also references the sex act, with the salt tipped into the shadow." She also argued that it would have been deliberate, but did not know what the painter's intention with it was. However, she stated that it was "not a Freudian slip, or a hypocritical, furtive innuendo. The imagery of masturbation and the anxieties around it and being unable to control yourself sexually would have been well known."