Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"

James Barry|John Milton

1792–95 · Graphite, brush and brown ink, gray and brown wash heightened with touches of white · Drawings and Prints

Milton’s Paradise Lost (Book II: 630–814) describes Satan’s arrival at the Gates of Hell after being cast from Heaven. Satan, finding Death guarding the entrance, menaces that skeletal form as the bare-breasted figure of Sin intercedes (he does not recognize this ghastly opponent, conceived incestuously with Sin, as his son). This drawing, made as Barry planned a series of large etchings inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, demonstrates the artist’s deep engagement with the aesthetic concept of the Sublime. His interest was encouraged by the philosopher Edmund Burke, an early patron whose 1757 treatise on the subject states that "terror . . . in all cases [is] . . . the ruling principle of the sublime."

Artist

James Barry|John Milton

Date

1792–95

Medium

Graphite, brush and brown ink, gray and brown wash heightened with touches of white

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Brooke Russell Astor Bequest, 2013