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Drawings

Illustration 5 to Milton's "Comus": The Magic Banquet with the Lady Spell-Bound

Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
ca. 1801
Accession number
000.24
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
8 11/16 x 7 1/16 in. (22.1 x 17.9 cm.) mount: 21 15/16 x 17 7/8 in. (55.7 x 45.4 cm.)
Medium
pen and watercolor
Description
The Lady is "set in an enchanted Chair" before a table "spread with all dainties" in Comus' "stately Palace" (stage direction following 658). The three large lamps hanging from above may have been prompted by the Lady's earlier reference to the stars as "Lamps/With everlasting oil" (198-99). The Lady's arms, crossed over her bosom, suggest both her bound condition and her attempts to protect the "freedom" of her mind (664). Her peril is underscored by the decorations on the chair: three figures, at least two of whom are female, encircled by serpents. Comus holds, in his left hand, his "Glass" (stage direction), filled just below the rim with "orient liquor" (65); his "wand" (659) is in his right hand. Five members of "his rabble" (stage direction) with the heads of birds stand or sit behind the main adversaries. The Second Brother refers to a "village cock" (346), thereby providing a possible suggestion for the cock's head below Comus' right elbow, but there are no further textual references to birds. The representation of these avian monsters may have been influenced by several pictures of Osiris in Montfaucon's Antiquity Explained and by engravings of sculpted owls in the third volume (1794) of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, The Antiquities of Athens, a work for which Blake engraved three plates. [1] The threatening unnaturalness of the banquet is underscored by Comus' rose-purple cape and blue hair, and by the greenish-yellow light suffused through the entire scene. In the Boston version, Comus' band, from left to right, have the heads of a bald man with an idiotic expression, a cat, an elephant, a lion or some such shaggy beast, a boar with protruding tongue (just to the right of Comus), and a long-beaked bird similar to the one in the Huntington design. The first two monsters stand holding a jar and a pitcher respectively; the remainder are seated and seem to be busy eating from plates or a cup (far right). Both the elephant and the lion have animal bodies to match their heads. A semi-transparent snake twists upward from the jar, held by the figure far left, to which Comus points his wand. He is slenderer, his blue cloak less full, and he holds the cup at shoulder level. The outline of a cloud or smoke arches over the snake, the Lady (whose hands rest on her thighs), and the first three monsters on the left. The side of the Lady's chair is decorated with a shaft of grain. The simple Doric columns of the Huntington design have been replaced by a different arrangement of Ionic columns. For his architectural setting, as with the moon goddess of the fourth design, Blake has turned to classical sources and motifs, much as Milton has filled his text with classical allusions. There are no rectangular portals beyond the archway in the background. Notes 1. Montfaucon 2: pls. 39, 45 (pointed out in Paley, "Wonderful Originals," 177 (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, 175. The association between Hecate and a serpent-drawn chariot is traditional; see Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk. 7 lines 290-92 of the Arthur Golding translation. Blake also pictures a moon goddess drawn by two serpents on plate 14 of his Job illustrations, first executed as a watercolor ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.14); Stuart and Revett 3:19, 29 (pointed out in Dunbar 1980, 24).
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)
The Lady, enchanted by Comus, sits spell-bound in a chair decorated with female figures encircled by serpents. Like the bird-headed guests at this demonic banquet, the Lady may be transformed into something less than fully human.

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