Full Description
A beautifully illustrated book that explores William Blake's relationship with Europe against a backdrop of political turmoil.
Responding to revolution and war in Europe, enslavement and exploitation in European colonies, and repression and reaction at home in Britain, William Blake (1757-1827) produced an astonishing body of work that combined criticism of the contemporary world with a vision for universal redemption.
Blake has always been seen as a distinctly English figure but, in reality, his art at all periods of his career is profoundly involved with Europe, as a source of his images and as a vision of the past, present and future of humanity. This richly illustrated book, published alongside an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, explores the vital ingredients of Blake's work and draws parallels with the ambitions of his artist contemporaries in Europe, most notably the German artist Philipp Otto Runge. In doing so the editors and contributors show that Blake was not alone in looking to art to build the world anew in the face of shattering political crises.
Contents
Directors' Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Editorial Note
Introduction: Blake, Runge and Visionary Art in Europe c.1800 - Esther Chadwick
Blake, Time and the Present Moment - Sarah Haggarty
- Blake and his Artist Contemporaries
PART I: The Past: Antiquity and the Gothic
Learning From the Past - John Flaxman
- Blake and Fuseli
- Blake and Dante
- Classics vs Gothic
PART II: The Present: Europe in Flames
Blake's Continental Prophecies: Apocalypse and Revolution - David Bindman
- Mind Forg'd Manacles: Slavery and Freedom
- French Revolution and Apocalypse
- The World as Prison
- Images of Redemption
PART III: The Future: Spiritual Renewal
Runge's Times - Joseph Leo Koerner
'Michael Angelo could not have done better': Dionysius Andreas Freher and the Visual Transmission of German Mysticism in Eighteenth-Century England - Cecilia Muratori
Henry Crabb Robinson, William Blake, and Anglo-German Cultural Relations - James Vigus
- Blake's New Religious Style
- Jacob Böhme
- Philipp Otto Runge: Times of Day
Romantic Nationalism - William Vaughan
- Romantic Nationalism
Notes
Works Cited
Picture Credits
Index
