The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)

The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)

William Blake

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this dynamic working drawing Blake, Britain's great early Romantic poet/artist, presents the resurrection of believing souls at the last day. The image echoes lines from Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians (4:15–17): "For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first." Blake imaginatively combined all three divine agents. Initially he sketched the central trumpet-blowing figure from the side, then scraped the form away and redrew it. In its final conception the trumpeter’s thrusting instrument puts the viewer in the position of a rising soul. In the 1780s and 1790s Blake typically worked out ideas for multifigural compositions in monochrome drawings such as this, using a pen to define forms and brushed wash for the shadows.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)The Last Trumpet (recto); Two studies of a right eye, a profile of an open-mouthed young man, the head of an eagle, and the head of a lion (verso)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.