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Drawings

Illustration 12 to Milton's "Paradise Lost": The Expulsion

Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1807
Accession number
000.13
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
9 13/16 x 8 1/16 in. (24.9 x 20.5 cm.)
Medium
pen and watercolor
Description
"In either hand the hast'ning Angel caught/ Our ling'ring Parents" and leads them "down the Cliff" from Eden (12:637-39). The angel Michael is dressed much as he is in the previous design, but he now wears a plumed crown less reminiscent of a centurion's helmet. These slight changes, plus the absence of his spear, make him less militant. Adam and Eve are once again clothed with leaves around their loins. "Looking back" (12:641) and up, they see a great coiling form representing the "Sword of God…/ Fierce as a Comet" (12:633-34) that leads them out of Eden and will become the "flaming Brand" (12:643) that bars them from returning. At the top of the design are four of the guardian "Cherubim…/ With dreadful Faces thron'd and fiery Arms" (12:628, 644). [1] Milton makes no mention of their mounts, the addition of which suggests the four horsemen of the Apocalypse. This allusion is appropriate because of Michael's earlier references to "this world's dissolution" and last judgment (12:459-60). Neither the lightning bolts nor the serpent below Michael's feet is named in the passage illustrated. The foreground thistles and thorny branches are not mentioned in Book 12, but receive textual precedent from Christ's earlier judgment of Adam ("Thorns also and Thistles," 10:203). Yet even these images of fallen nature are not devoid of redemptive significance, for the thorns remind us of Christ's crown in the previous design. [2] Blake pictured the expulsion of Adam and Eve on the title page of Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) and in a pencil drawing of ca. 1820-25 (Alice M. Kaplan collection; Butlin 1981, No. 1026). Neither is related compositionally to this Paradise Lost illustration. In Blake's watercolor of 1807, "The Fall of Man" (Victoria and Albert Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 641), Christ holds Adam and Eve by their hands and guides them out of Paradise much as Michael guides the pair in this illustration. "The Fall of Man" includes steps behind the trio much like those indicated by horizontal lines in the Huntington design. See also 000.10. In the Butts/Boston version, the Cherubim are more prominent. The ears of their horses touch at their tips to form ogee arches. Adam and Eve look down at the serpent. Their hand gestures are generally the same as in the Huntington design, but Eve's open mouth underscores the expression of surprise. Michael holds Eve by the wrist rather than the hand. His crown has become a simple skullcap surmounted by a great flowing plume. There is only one thistle plant (left margin) and the thorns are placed differently. There are no steps behind the foreground figures. Notes 1. Pointon 1970, 143, and Butlin 1981, 381, associate these figures with the Four Zoas in Blake's mythology. See also Jerusalem, plate 13: "The Western Gate fourfold, is closd: Having four Cherubim/ Its guards…" (Blake 1982, 156). 2. The hopeful possibilities in the design, underscored by the serious yet mild expressions on all faces, are discussed in Kester Svendsen, "John Martin and the Expulsion Scene of Paradise Lost," Studies in English Literature 1 (1961):70-71; Merritt Y. Hughes, "Some Illustrators of Milton: The Expulsion from Paradise," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 60 (1961):673; Wittreich 1971, 102-103. For a comparison of Blake's design with Edward Burney's, see W. J. T. Mitchelle, Blake's Composite Art (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978), 19-20.
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 are led by the angel Michael out of paradise and into the fallen world inhabited by the serpent and thorny plants. The first man and woman look above and back to the flames and guardian angels that prevent their return to Eden.

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