John Martin
English, 1789-1854
The Fall of Babylon, from Illustrations of the Bible
INV-1180
John Martin
English, 1789-18541835
The Fall of Babylon, from Illustrations of the Bible
John Martin English, 1789-1854 →mezzotintprint
Date
1835
Medium
Mezzotint with etching in black on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 19 × 29 cm (7 1/2 × 11 7/16 in.); Plate: 26.8 × 35.7 cm (10 9/16 × 14 1/16 in.); Sheet: 32.9 × 41.6 cm (13 × 16 7/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
John H. Wrenn Memorial Endowment
The visionary Romantic painter John Martin’s Illustrations of the Bible (1831–35) boasts some of the most dramatic mezzotints of the 19th century. This series enthusiastically embraced J. M. W. Turner’s “historical” category from the Liber Studiorum (1807–1819). Yet “Mad” Martin eschewed Turner’s sepia tonality for a deep, velvet black periodically ripped asunder by lightning bolts. He engraved over 100 mezzotints, with special attention paid to the light and dark contrasts of Old Testament miracles and disasters. Although the series remained unfinished, his taste for elaborate destruction was sometimes well remunerated: when his gigantic oil painting Belshazzar’s Feast (1821; private collection) was put on view soon after being made, it attracted 50,000 paying viewers.
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