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Illustration 10 to Milton's "Paradise Lost": The Judgment of Adam and Eve: "So Judged He Man"

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1807
Accession number
000.11
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
9 13/16 x 7 15/16 in. (25 x 20.2 cm.)
Medium
watercolor and pen and black ink over traces of graphite on paper
Description
Christ, a haloed "mild Judge and Intercessor both" (10:96), stands between Adam and Eve and gestures toward each as He delivers his judgment on them and the serpent (10:163-208). Eve, "with shame nigh overwhelm'd" (10:159), buries her face in her hands, while Adam bows and clasps his hands in prayer. Both have covered their loins with "broad smooth Leaves" (9:1095; see also 9:1110-15) of a shape typical of Blake's representations of oak leaves. All three figures stand on an enormous leaf like the one beneath Adam in the eighth illustration. The serpent, whose penalty is to move on his "Belly groveling" (10:177), undulates just behind and below the raised heels of Adam and Eve, for "Her Seed shall bruise thy [the serpent's] head, thou bruise his heel" (10:181). Sin and Death, allowed to pass through the "Gates of Hell" (9:230) as a consequence of the fall, dominate the top of the design. They are not present during the judgment scene in Milton's text, and thus Blake has pictured in one composition two consecutive events in the narrative, much as he does in the previous design. A cloud band - perhaps a reminder of the "Bridge" (9:301) they had built to earth - separates Sin and Death from the trio below but does not stop the descent of Death's darts on the left or the diseases Sin pours from two vials on the right (see 11:471-93). Blake, following the imagery of Revelation Chap. 16, pictured vials with liquid pouring from them to symbolize disease in his engraving on page ten of the 1797 edition of Edward Young's Night Thoughts, and included both darts and a single vial in "Satan Smiting Job with Boils," first executed as part of the Job watercolor series of ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.6). Death, bearded and crowned, is recognizably the same figure portrayed in the second design; but he is no longer transparent, for the fall has given him physical embodiment. Sin's hellhounds and two serpentine tails surround her torso. The two figures seem to join at the waist, thereby picturing Milton's comment that "Death from Sin no power can separate" (10:251). In the Butts version, now in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Adam's head is upright rather than bowed and his right heel is poised above the serpent's head. Christ's halo is less clearly defined around its circumference. Death has three rather than eight darts, but he is otherwise pictured much as in the Huntington design even though he does not have a beard in the Butts version of the second illustration. The malevolent visages of Sin and Death are more strongly characterized, and we see more of their faces, than in the Huntington version. The hellhounds are differently arranged, with two above Sin's head and none beneath her right arm. Both of her scaly tails extend toward the right margin. Individual leaves are clearly outlined in the shrubbery between the background tree trunks.
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)
Christ, a haloed "mild Judge and Intercessor," stands between the guilt-ridden pair. Sin and Death (see illustration 2) rain down their evils on the earth. The satanic serpent undulates along the ground.

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