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Illustration 7 to Milton's "Paradise Lost": The Rout of the Rebel Angels

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1807
Accession number
000.8
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
11 5/16 x 8 3/16 in. (28.8 x 20.8 cm.)
Medium
watercolor and pen and black ink over graphite on paper
Description
The final battle in heaven is described in 6:834-66. Christ, all but His left arm circumscribed by the disc of the sun, bends His great "Bow" (6:713, 763) and aims one of seven "arrows" (6:845) at the rebellious angels now "Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Sky" (1:45). [1] Two groups of three loyal angels hover on each side of the circle. The front-most angel in each group gestures in awe at the spectacle below. Blake drew similar groups of gesturing angels, but without wings, around God in his fifth Job watercolor of ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin No. 550.5). Christ's face is taut and "severe," but does not strongly express the "wrath" Milton describes (6:825-26). Blake also pictures a heroically proportioned figure leaning on one knee and reaching down from a great circle in his famous "Ancient of Days," the frontispiece to Europe (1794); but there the figure is Urizen in the act of delineating material creation with giant compasses. Blake's sixth design to Thomas Gray's "The Progress of Poesy," executed ca. 1797-98, is an even closer analogue (collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon; Butlin 1981, No. 335.46). In the Gray illustration, Hyperion stands before the flaming disc of the sun and points his bow and arrow to the left. Specters of the night descend headlong below shafts of light in the form of arrowheads, much as in this Paradise Lost illustration. A similar format and visual pun on Son/sun also appear in John Flaxman's thirty-first illustration to Dante's Paradiso, in which Christ sits enthroned on the sun surrounded by lines of radiance and worshipful (but not winged) figures. [2] The falling angels, like Satan's companions in the first design, have many forerunners in Blake's works featuring Michaelangesque figures. The central figure, with scales already covering part of his loins, may be Satan, for his is shown in much the same posture in Blake's sixteenth Job watercolor of ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.16). Blake first used this figure type on plate 7 of America (1793). Just below the left forearm of this central figure is one of the "helmed heads" mentioned by Milton (6:840). The next head to the left is crowned. The large figure on the left, with his hands over his head, falls like the victim on the left in plate 6 of The Book of Urizen (1794). Three large watercolors contemporary with the Huntington Paradise Lost series include several similar damned and descending figures: "A Vision of the Last Judgment" of 1806 (Pollock House, Glasgow; Butlin 1981, No. 639), "The Fall of Man" of 1807 (Victoria and Albert Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 641), and "The Vision of the Last Judgment" of 1808 (Petworth House, Sussex; Butlin 1981, No. 642). In a group of three interrelated drawings of ca. 1780, Blake pictures the battle in heaven between Satan and Michael in Paradise Lost (untraced, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Bolton Museum; Butlin 1981, Nos. 103-104A). Blake developed this design in a pencil sketch of ca. 1795 and in one of his Night Thoughts watercolors of ca. 1795-97 (both British Museum; Butlin 1981, Nos. 105, 330.452). Although these compositions are closely related in subject to the Huntington Paradise Lost design, none bears any compositional similarities to it. In the Butts/Boston version, Christ's face is milder, perhaps touched by "Divine compassion" (3:141). Both His knees touch the lower rim of the sun's circle. There is a large arrowhead below His bow hand, but there is no shaft, as though Christ's straight left arm had replaced it. There are four arrows of light descending from the sun. Below are thirteen (rather than fourteen) falling angels, some indicated only by their heads. The three largest, front-most figures are variations on those in the Huntington version, with the left and right figures exchanging places. There are many differences between the two designs in the postures and positions of the other bodies and heads. None are helmeted or crowned in the Butts/Boston version. Notes 1. Bows and arrows play an important role in the symbolic imagery of Blake's poetry-see particularly his letter to Thomas Butts of 22 November 1802 ("Los flam'd in my path, & the sun was hot/ With the bows of my Mind & the Arrows of Thought-") and plates 97-98 of Jerusalem (Blake 1982, 256-57, 722). 2. Not published in England until 1807, but Blake may have been shown the engravings of 1793 by his good friend Flaxman after his return from Italy in 1794. The similarities between the designs are pointed out in Collins Baker 1940, 124 of the 1973 reprint. Baker also notes a general similarity between "the falling figures in Flaxman's Purgatorio" (no doubt the sixteenth plate) and Blake's rebel angels. George Romney's drawing of the "Fall of the Rebel Angels" of ca. 1800-1802 (Fitzwilliam Museum) also pictures Christ standing before or within a circle emitting rays of light along its lower edge and surrounded by obeisant angels on each side.
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)
In the war in heaven, Christ with His mighty bow sends the rebellious angels to hell. As in the first illustration, the representation of the falling angels owes much to Michelangelo's Last Judgement fresco.

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