Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Blake saw the material world as bad, trapping the divine spark inside each of our bod-
ies and keeping us from true communion with God. Blake's prints illustrate his views on
the ultimate weakness of material, scientific man. Despite their Greek-god anatomy, his
men look noble but tragically lost.
A famous poet as well as painter, Blake summed up his distrust of the material world
in a poem addressed to “The God of this World”—that is, Satan:
Tho' thou art Worship'd by the Names Divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost Traveller's Dream under the Hill.
“Romantic” Landscapes—Art and the Sublime
Artists in the Romantic style saw the most intense human emotions reflected in the drama
and mystery of nature. Some of them mixed landscapes with intense human emotion to
produce huge, colorful canvases depicting storms, burning sunsets, towering clouds, and
crashing waves, all dwarfing puny humans.
