Milton, John; Martin, John (illus.) Paradise Lost. Printed for Henry Washbourne, 1853. 4to,...
Milton, John; Martin, John (illus.) Paradise Lost. Printed for Henry Washbourne, 1853. 4to, full coarse-grain plum leather gilt; 24 mezzotints by John Martin. Martin's mezzotints were first sold in stages to subscribers. Twenty-four were then selected to accompany the poem, originally in a two-volume edition in 1827. Mezzotints seem especially apt for Milton's work, with their emphasis on the contrast between dark and light. Typical of all artists, in imagining Milton's work, Martin has drawn on his own Romantic sentiments, The poem becomes an embodiment of the sublime. His figures disappear before the grandeur and the terror of the setting. Both Heaven and Hell are greater than those within them, eternal, magnificent and legitimately awe-inspiring. This has split critical appreciation however. Whilst some praise the incredible drama of Martin's creations, others decry the depowering of the figures, so central and critical to the poem. Unlike Dante and Virgil, mere humans on a cosmic stage, Milton's characters are fallen angels central to the Christian understanding of cosmology. Whatever the feeling on their interpretation of the poem, there is no denying the sense of scale and reality Martin gives to the images. It is possible that some elements of his work on the industrial redevelopment of towns has crept in, capturing the sweep of the Divine through the lens of Blake's Satanic Mills.