Satan Presiding at the Infernal Council, Book 2, Line 1

 

John Martin

  1789 - 1854

1824 (published 1827) 

mezzotint 

5 5/8 x 8 1/8" image 

engraved below image 

not stated 

engraved below image: Book 2 Line 1 

CW 54 

smooth white wove 

published 

Prowett 

17071 

SOLD

John Martin began the process of illustrating Milton's Paradise Lost in 1824 under commission from the publisher Septimus Prowett. The project called for the production of 48 mezzotints, 24 for an octavo size set and an equal number for a larger deluxe set. Prowett sold subscriptions to the sets, and subscribers received prints in increments until 1827, when the project was complete. In 1832 Prowett, an American who had not been able to persaude the English market for whom it had been intended to purchase it, sold Martin's plates to the publisher Charles Tilt, along with the substantial number of unsold sheets from his 1827 editions of Paradise Lost. Martin made revisions to a few of the plates, and the whole set was released in a bound edition. Attesting to their popularity, Martin's mezzotints were published in four additional editions after the Prowett plates were sold. The genius of Martin's composition, and his uncanny mastery of light, dark, mist and shadow in a medium as exacting as mezzotint, are as difficult to fathom now as they were in the 19th century.