Illustration 4 to Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity": The Overthrow of Apollo and the Pagan Gods

Maker William Blake (British, 1757 - 1827)

Additional Title(s)

Illustrations to "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" [no. 4 of 6]
The Overthrow of Apollo and the Pagan Gods

Collections

ClassificationsDRAWINGS

Dateca. 1814-1816

Mediumpen and watercolor

Dimensions6 3/16 x 4 13/16 in. (15.7 x 12.3 cm.) mount: 14 x 9 7/16 in. (35.5 x 24 cm.)

DescriptionThe lack of symmetry in this design and its rather cluttered appearance bespeak the disarry that the birth of Christ has brought to paganism. The "parting Genius" (186) of Apollo, his mouth open slightly in a "shriek" (178), dives down in an arc of pale flames and leaves behind his now spiritless statue (173-78). Below and in front of the statue is an altar in the shape of an Ionic column. Its flames point downward, as though the sacrificial fires are now becoming hellish and destructive. Below are four worshipers, perhaps "Flamens" (194) and/or the "Tyrian Maids" who "their wounded Thammuz mourn" (204), bowing in prayer and "lament" (183). To the right of the statue, a woman wails within a confining cavern in the "steep of Delphos" (178) rising in the background. She may be a personification of the "breathed spell" which "Inspires the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell" (179-80) or one of the "Nymphs" who "in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn" (188). Her expression and hair are similar to those of "the Delphic Priestess" Blake portrays in one of his watercolors of ca. 1795-97 illustrating Young's Night Thoughts (British Museum: Butlin 1981, No. 330.302). The small trees to the left of this woman and left of the statue evoke the "poplar pale" (185) and the thicket of the Nymphs. On the top of Delphos and in front of a colonnade are a band of undefined outlines and washes that suggest departing spirits, as in the more clearly drawn Whitworth version. Two forms at the top have bat wings. Between the colonnade lower left and the descending Genius, a ghostly figure hovers over the sea, probably as a visualization of "A voice of weeping heard" over "the resounding shore" (182-83). In 1815, Blake engraved a reproduction of the Apollo Belvedere to illustrate John Flaxman's essay on "Sculpture" in Abraham Rees, the Cyclopaedia (plates volume 4, dated 1820). Like the "Laocoon" pictured on the same plate, Blake probably based his Apollo on a plaster cast then in the drawing school of the Royal Academy. [1] The statue of Apollo in this "Nativity Ode" design is clearly based on this same restoration of the Apollo Belvedere. In comparison to the Cyclopaedia plate, the "Nativity Ode" design differs in the addition of the bow, the absence of sandals, the turning of the statue's face from profile to three-quarter view, and the enlargement and repositioning of the Python around the tree stump behind and to the left of Apollo. The importance of Blake's necessarily close study of the statue for the engraving is indicated by the fact that Apollo in the earlier, Whitworth watercolor, although based in general outline and posture on the Apollo Belvedere, lacks all the details (quiver, cloak, tree stump with serpent) directly linking the Huntington version to the Cyclopaedia illustration and its source. The story of Apollo killing the Python made him a type of Christ; but in the context of the "Nativity Ode" designs, the classical myth is replaced by the Christian truth it prefigures. Further, the visual allusion to what was in Blake's day one of the most highly regarded monuments of classical civilization transforms the design into an expression of Blake's criticism of the derivative, even destructive, nature of Greek and Roman art. [2] In the Whitworth version, the statue of Apollo holds the neck of the open-mouthed (and dead?) serpent in the left hand; the right hand grasps a lower part of the snake, whose body ends in coils at Apollo's feet. The parting Genius has his mouth open wide. Between him and the statue is a large, many-pointed star-no doubt the star of Bethlehem (see 240). Two triangular shapes, probably the sails of ships, sink into the sea lower left. A gowned figure stands on the shore, looking to the left and gesturing with her hands to the right. In the lower left foreground are two bearded men (Flamens?) looking up in anguish at the statue. The man closest to the base of the statue wears a wreath of leaves; both gesture in fear. In front of them is a woman bent low in prayer, as are her two companions (Tyrian Maids?) lower right. The woman in the cave sits on a low stool, her body more upright than in the Huntington version. There are no trees on the hill, but on its level summit are a small altar and five figures, one of which is probably another statue with its Genius escaping upwards in flame. Above are three bolts of lightning and a band of clouds containing a winged circle entwined with two serpents; a dog-headed figure ("Anubis," 212); a bull-headed figure ("Osiris," 213); and two more or less human forms, one bearded, soaring just below the top center and top left edge of the image. [3] The colonnade upper right is Doric and that on the lower left is Ionic. There is no capital beneath the fire on the altar in front of the central statue. Notes 1. See Geoffrey Keynes, William Blake's Laocoon (London: Trianon Press, 1976). 2. In the "Preface" to Milton (ca. 1804-1808), Blake rejects "Greek or Roman Models" in favor of Christianity and "our own Imaginations" (Blake 1982, 95). In A Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, he states that the "Apollo Belvidere" and other classical works were copied from patriarchal originals (Blake 1982, 531). 3. Blake probably learned of the ancient Near Eastern emblem of the winged disc with serpents from an engraving in Bryant, 1:Pl. 8 (see Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.14. See also "David Delivered out of Many Waters," a watercolor of ca. 1805 (Tate Gallery; Butlin 1981, No. 552). A likely source for this crossing pattern is a relief from Persepolis engraved in James Basire's shop for Jacob Bryant, A New System of Ancient Mythology (London, 1774-75), 2: Pl. 2. Blake was one of Basire's apprentices at that time and may have helped with the Bryant plates. Blake refers to Bryant in his Descriptive Catalogue of 1809 (Blake 1982, 543). Osiris, but also "Moloch" (205), were often pictured with the head of a bull or ox. Both bull and dog-headed gods are also pictured in Richard Westall's illustration of the same lines, engraved in 1797.

SignedSigned on lower left or right: W Blake

InscribedInscribed on the mount below the image in golden brown ink in a fine italic script are lines 173-180 of the poem. Signed in lower left or right: W Blake

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Label TextEven Apollo, the Greek god of light and knowledge, is replaced by the infant Christ. The classical deity's spirit descends in flames from his outer form, based on the famous statue, the Apollo Belvedere. His worshippers still bow below the now meaningless statue; a priestess wails within a confining cavern on the right.

Status

Not on view

Object number000.17

Terms