Fall of the Rebel Angels

The Fall of the Rebel Angels from around 1822 by John Martin depicts the biblical expulsion of Satan and his followers from Heaven, a subject that allowed the artist to deploy his signature vision of catastrophic light and vertiginous space. Martin was the great painter of apocalypse in British Romanticism, specializing in scenes of divine wrath and cosmic upheaval on canvases of overwhelming scale. The subject derives from Paradise Lost, Milton's epic that provided Martin with his most fertile source material. The rebel angels cascade through a gulf of blazing light, dwarfed by the infinite space around them, in a composition that refuses human-scale comfort. Martin's theatrical sublimity influenced not only contemporary painters but the popular imagination of heaven, hell, and divine power throughout the Victorian era. The work is held at the Fogg Museum.

The cosmic battle is rendered with Martin's characteristic dramatic chiaroscuro and vertiginous spatial composition, creating a sense of sublime terror.