![]() The figure in the center depicts Milton’s grotesquely graphic allegorical construction of Sin. Look, for example, at the play of patterns behind the figures in the illustration above, from an edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. In person, his drawings are indeed impressive, but they are equally so for their careful attention to design and composition as for their heavy, often quite terrifying subjects. ![]() But William Blake (1757–1827) is such a tremendous force, his work so monumentally strange and beautiful, that one expects to be overpowered by it. This should not have been surprising-these are book illustrations, after all. ![]() ![]() When I saw William Blake’s illustrations for the book of Job and for John Milton’s L’Allegro and I l Penseroso at the Morgan Library a few years ago, I was first struck by how small the intricate watercolors are. ![]()
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