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Illustration 3 to Milton's "Paradise Lost": Christ Offers to Redeem Man

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1807
Accession number
000.4
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
10 1/8 x 8 1/4 in. (25.7 x 20.9 cm.)
Medium
pen and watercolor
Description
Christ is shown in the act of offering to atone through His incarnation and death for man's sins (3:222-65). Blake drew a very similar image of Christ in "The Ascension," a watercolor of ca. 1803-1805 (Fitzwilliam Museum: Butlin 1981, No. 505). Christ's gesture, contrasting sharply with the enclosed and static posture of the Father "High Thron'd" but "bent down" (3:58), foreshadows the crucifixion we see in the eleventh design. The hiding of God's face and the placement of Christ before Him may be Blake's pictorial literalization of Milton's description of the Son as He though whom "th' Almighty Father shines,/Whom else no Creature can behold" (3:386-87). On both sides of the rectilinear throne, similar to the one bearing a heavy, despairing figure on plate 51 of Blake's Jerusalem, angels descend to "cast/ Their Crowns" before God (3:349-52). A similar descending figure, but with arms outstretched, appears in one of Blake's Night Thoughts watercolors he also engraved (British Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 330.17, page 40 of the 1797 edition). Below, Satan is "Coasting the wall of Heav'n on this side Night/ In the dun Air sublime" (3:71-72). He holds his spear and shield and his genitals are again covered with scales, but he now has wings (3:73) with bat-like trailing edges. He is similarly armed and winged, but pictured in a somewhat different hovering posture, in Blake's 1795 color printed drawing, "Satan Exulting Over Eve" (Butlin 1981, Nos. 291-92). Milton's "wall" at the periphery of heaven becomes in Blake's illustration a parabolic cloud band. In the Paradise Lost series and in several of his Job illustrations of ca. 1805-1806, Blake used such clouds to indicate the boundary between higher and lower states of vision and being. [1] "Christ Offers to Redeem Man" includes motifs from two preliminary drawings in Blake's Notebook (British Library: Butlin Nos. 201.104 and 201.110-11). [2] The pencil sketch on page 104 lacks the descending angels but includes the winged Holy Ghost hovering over the scene. The Father's arms overlap the Son's and reach down to His buttocks. The sketch on pages 110-11 is a somewhat different composition, with God's face and long beard visible and the Son standing prayerfully at the Father's left hand. Below, a figure one would expect to be Satan, yet with female breasts, twists within a web of curved lines. In the Butts/Boston version, the larger figures fill almost all of the pictorial space. God slumps over slightly to His right and His hands are a little higher on Christ's back. Unlike the Huntington design, there are no horizontal lines suggesting steps below God's throne. Christ's head is turned to the left so that we see a profile of His "conspicuous count'nance" (3:385) on which "Divine compassion visibly appear'd" (3:141). His hands overlap the ankles of the descending angels. On each side, the front-most angel completely covers the body of his companion, only a portion of whose face is pictured. The angels' crows are "inwove with Amarant…/ …a Flow'r which once/ In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life/ Began to bloom…" (3:352-55). Satan holds his spear with the point at its top, just above his right hand. There are no scales over his loins. The cloud band is less symmetrical, particularly where it dips below Christ's feet, and there is a stronger contrast between the "dun Air" (3:72) around Satan and the light radiating from God. Notes 1. Blake probably learned of this device from early German prints, such as the "Resurrection" in Durer's Large Passion series of 1511. 2. For a complete reproduction, see The Notebook of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman with the assistance of Donald K. Moore, Revised Edition ([New York]: Readex Books, 1977).
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, assuming a posture prophetic of his crucifixion, comes before God the Father and offers to atone for human sins. Attendant angels "cast their crowns" below God's throne while an unhappy Satan hovers below on bat-like wings. The weak, slumping figure of God the Father suggests that Blake, like many readers of Paradise Lost, found Milton's characterization of divinity less convincing than his presentation of Satan, evil yet fascinating.

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