Illustration to Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake, 1808. Watercolor on paper, 50.5 x 40.2 cm. Gift by Subscription. Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Christ Offers to Redeem Man

One of twelve watercolor with pen drawings, here Blake has brought out the theological centrality of Christ's sacrifice to redeem man. His ecstatic gesture of renunciation contrasts with the material and therefore despairing perceptions of Jehovah, who cannot understand the nature of this sacrifice. Christ's gesture of affirmation prefigures the crucifixion. Four angels offer crowns to the Light and Logos of Creation Who, as the Incarnation of Mercy, Pity, Love, and Peace, will adopt a human heart and show a human face to reclaim the divinity of the human form, made in the image and likeness of its Creator.