Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"

Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"

James Barry

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Milton’s Paradise Lost (Book II: 630–814) describes Satan’s arrival at the Gates of Hell after being cast from Heaven. Satan, finding Death guarding the entrance, menaces that skeletal form as the bare-breasted figure of Sin intercedes (he does not recognize this ghastly opponent, conceived incestuously with Sin, as his son). This drawing, made as Barry planned a series of large etchings inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, demonstrates the artist’s deep engagement with the aesthetic concept of the Sublime. His interest was encouraged by the philosopher Edmund Burke, an early patron whose 1757 treatise on the subject states that "terror . . . in all cases [is] . . . the ruling principle of the sublime."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"Satan, Sin, and Death: "Death and Sin met by Satan on his Return from Earth"

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.