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Drawings

Joseph and Mary, and the Room They Were Seen in

Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
ca. 1819-1820
Accession number
000.47
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
6 11/16 x 9 7/8 in. (17 x 25.1 cm.) sheet: 7 7/8 x 12 3/8 in. (20 x 31.4 cm.)
Medium
pencil on wove paper
Description
Two portrait busts with an interior scene between them. Joseph and Mary are shown as adolescents in both the large busts and the interior scene. The room looks contemporary, with what may be a mantel on the right and a bed with canopy and bolsters behind Mary. Thus, the room may be the actual one in which Blake saw the figures before his mind's eye rather than a recreation of a Biblical bedroom. A tall, bearded, and perhaps haloed man stands behind Joseph, holding the boy's right hand and left arm and apparently guiding him off to the left. The children as shown in the same head and arm posture in the larger busts. Mary holds her hands demurely over her chest. A few sketchy lines of Joseph's left arm in the larger portrait indicate the location of the bearded man's left hand in the interior scene. The nose, mouth, and heavy-lidded eyes of Blake's Mary are similar to these features in one of Raphael's Madonnas reproduced in an unsigned engraving in Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (1792), 2:334. A portrait of the Virgin with some of the same characteristics, plus thin, arched eyebrows like those in this "Visionary Head," faces page 390 in volume 3 (1798) of Lavater.
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)
Like Solomon (adjacent), this is another of Blake's "Visionary Heads." The mother and father of Jesus are portrayed as adolescents in the foreground. The scene in the background shows these same figures, plus a bearded man (Joseph's father?) leading the young man off to the left. The setting looks contemporary with the drawing, and thus may be Blake's rendition of the bedroom in which he saw this vision rather than an attempt to recreate a Biblical interior.

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