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Drawings

Illustration 5 to Milton's "Paradise Lost": Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1807
Accession number
000.6
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
10 1/8 x 8 9/16 in. (25.7 x 21.8 cm.)
Medium
watercolor and pen and black ink over graphite on paper
Description
The design illustrates the luxuriant scene in which Adam kisses Eve while Satan watches with "envy" (4:492-504), but Blake draws on other passages in Book Four to picture the couple's "happy nuptial League" (4:339). Several critics have associated the gentle sensuousness of the design with the state of "Beulah" in Blake's mythic poetry. [1] Adam and Eve sit on a "soft downy Bank damaskt with flow'rs" (4:334) over which large sprigs of "Laurel" and roses "without Thorn" form a blissful "Bower" (4:256, 690, 694, 698). [2] Below their feet are lily-like flowers, not mentioned in the poem. A somewhat exaggerated and stylized emphasis on the floral surroundings is also offered in engraved illustrations of Edenic scenes in Paradise Lost by Richard Westall (1795), Edward Burney (1799), and Henry Fuseli (ca. 1800-1810). Eve "half imbracing lean'd/ On our first Father," and looks on Adam "with eyes/ Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd" (4:492-95). [3] Her "loose tresses" (4:497) tumble over her right shoulder. Adam wears a wreath of flowers in his hair - a detail, not mentioned in the text, which foreshadows Christ's crown of thorns in the eleventh design. Above, Satan gazes at his serpent form twisted around him in a solipsistic parody of the kiss and embrace of Adam and Eve. His left hand, resting on the serpent's head, repeats the form of Eve's hand on the back of Adam's head. Satan's right forefinger points toward Adam's head or slightly above and beyond it. Satan's human form is little more than a ghostly presence; one of the two stars in the sky can be seen through his upper wing. Thus he has taken on one of Death's characteristics in the second design, while his serpentine self recalls Sin. Satan's posture may have its source in two engravings of wind gods in James Stuart and Nicolas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, volume 1 (1762). [4] The sun has "declin'd" into "th' Ocean" (4:353-54) on the left, balanced by "the coming on/ Of grateful Ev'ning mild" and the "fair Moon" with "her starry twain" on the right (4:646-49; see also 4:355, 540-41). In 1806, Blake executed a watercolor of the same scene showing the serpent at the feet of Adam and Eve and Satan above grasping his head with both hands in jealous torment (Fogg Art Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 531). The torsos and heads of Adam and Eve are positioned as in the Huntington and Butts/Boston designs, but their arms and hands are arranged differently. A small pencil sketch (Fitzwilliam Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 532), picturing only Adam and Eve, would seem to be a preliminary for the 1806 design since both show Eve's legs crossed at the ankles. Another pencil drawing (British Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 33) is probably an intermediate composition between the 1806 design and the Huntington version. The lines delineating Satan are unclear in this sketch, but he may be holding the serpent in his extended right hand. The sun and moon are situated as in the Huntington design. In the Butts/Boston version, Satan's position is reversed so that he now flies to the right. Consequently, we can now see a clear similarity between Adam's cradling of Eve's head in his right hand and Satan's caress of the serpent's head with his right hand. Satan's left forefinger points directly at Eve's right eye; she now seems to be gazing up at Satan as much as at Adam. All these changes strengthen the parodic relationship between the two couples and hint at Eve's later fascination with the serpent's seductive attentions. The sun is now on the right side of the composition with Adam; the moon is on the left with Eve. If this reversal is meant to preserve the usual directional conventions of east and west, then the sun must be rising, as Eve describes it in 4:641-56. Satan is more solidly modeled than in the Huntington version, but two of the eight stars can be seen through (or on?) his upper wing. Eve holds a single rose in her left hand and Adam holds two lilies on one stem in his left hand, now extended to mid-thigh. There are no berries on the laurel on the left; both bordering springs now look more like palm fronds. There are numerous minor differences in the floral arrangements. The design in the incomplete series planned for Linnell closely follows the Butts/Boston version (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Butlin 1981, No. 537.1). There are three stars in the sky above Satan's feet, three on his legs, one bisected by the upper edge of his right wing, and one on his left wing to the right of his left shoulder. Notes 1.See Rose 1970, 40; Paley 1978, 63; Behrendt 1983, 145. 2. The large leaves on each side of the design have sometimes been described as palm fronds (see Baker 1957, 19, and Dunbar 1980, 57), but the small berries at the juncture of the leaves on the branch on the left identify them as laurel. The leaves and berries are similar to the laurel or bay wreaths around the portraits of Homer and Milton in Blake's "Heads of the Poets" he painted for William Hayley ca. 1800-1803 (City of Manchester Art Galleries; Butlin 1981, Nos. 343.1 and 343.11). 3. Behrendt 1983, 146, points out the similarity between the positioning of Adam and Eve in Blake's design and their embrace in Stephen Rigaud's illustration, engraved in 1801. Wilton 1976 (see note 20), 193, suggests that a drawing by Blake's friend George Cumberland of a classical group in the Borghese Gallery may be a source for Adam and Eve's eye-to-eye gaze, similar to the portrayal of Har and Heva in Blake's second illustration to his poem Tiriel of ca. 1789 (Fitzwilliam Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 198.2). Several scholars have suggested that this motif was influenced by James Barry's painting of "Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida" - a most appropriate source for this Paradise Lost design because of Milton's explicity comparison of Adam and Eve to Jupiter and Juno in the passage illustrated (4:499-500). But the influence of Barry on at least the Tiriel design is uncertain because of difficulties in dating the painting, which Barry may have been working on as late as 1804. See William L. Pressly, The Life and Art of James Barry (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1981), 148-51. 4. Pls. XIV and XV; suggested in Paley, "Wonderful Originals" (London: n.p., 1721), 1: P1. 20. Blake may have studied the French edition (Paris, 1719) of this important work in William Hayley's library; see the auction catalogue of Hayley's books, Mr. Evans, 13-25 February 1821, lot 1854. Morton Paley has pointed to this same design in Montfaucon as a source for plate 46 of Blake's Jerusalem; see " 'Wonderful Originals' - Blake and Ancient Sculpture," in Blake in His Time 1978, 178. The first of these plates was engraved by James Basire, to whom Blake was apprenticed in the 1770s.
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
Find out more
View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
Adam and Eve kiss on a luxuriant bed of flowers. Satan, flying above, mirrors Adam's gesture as he caresses, and stares intently at, his own serpent form. The design suggests the difference between mutual love and self-love.

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