BLAKE, William
(b. 1757, London, d. 1827, London)

The Book of Job: When the Morning Stars Sang Together

1820
Watercolour, 280 x 179 mm
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York

Blake's images oscillate between dream and reason. Even direct references to the Bible, as here to the Book of Job, do not necessarily mean that this is an illustration of the Bible. The scenes are too much a part of the artist's private religious vision. Here we see Job, who has been through torment and suffering, taken up by God. With His arms outstretched, God appears as the Lord of Light and Darkness, but the depiction could also be intended to show God as the Lord of the Earth. There is a striking similarity in the faces of God and Job.

The sheet is a drawing for one of the sequences of engravings that appeared from 1825.