From hasty sketches to remarkably detailed first drafts, these fine reproductions show the full range of Blake's troubled genius. There are many of the first, vigorous and immediate drawings of Blake's illustrations of "The Book of Job", "The Divine Comedy", the Miltonic epics, and of Shakespeare's plays. Blake's humor and his gift for portraiture are exemplified in the "Visionary Heads", drawn directly, he asserted, from visions of historical personages who came in his studio (Voltaire, Friar Bacon, Batsheba, Queen Eleanor, etc.). From the mystic world of his own intricate mythology are figures from "The Four Zoas", Urizen, Los, the Soul Hovering over the Body, and wealth of other drawings no less compelling for their complex, sometimes inaccessibly personal symbolism. Although Blake scorned drawing from nature and preferred for models the creatures of his own mind, his studies of nude figures and famous sculpture, as well as a touching portrait of Catherine Blake, his wife, show great aptitude in accurate representation.
Format:
178 p., 205x277 mm, paperback
fond special / librărie / colecţie particulară / anticariat /
