Ford Madox Brown's Cromwell, Protector of the Vaudois (1877), portrays Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell collaborating on a letter protesting the Piedmontese Easter massacre. Brown's painting is a highly dynamic composition designed to stress the relationship between Cromwell as a man of action and Milton as a powerful intellectual force, with Marvell energetically poised to execute their combined wills. In this respect the painting is a development of the central theme of Brown's earlier painting Work, but in this case emphasises the work of a "power elite" rather than ordinary manual labour. Cromwell's pose, splayed across the desk, is a development of earlier imagery in which Cromwell had been depicted as a rough or unceremonious figure. His contained energy is emphasised by the precariously balanced desk, supported on a curved base with small stabilising feet. Milton's gesture is similarly transitory, finger raised, while the cropped, half-obscured figure of Marvell holds his pen ready waiting.