Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Riding on a Lamb with St John

Blake's 1800 painting of the Virgin and Infant Jesus riding a lamb, accompanied by Saint John, is an intimate devotional image that combines the holy family tradition with the pastoral symbolism of Christ as the Lamb of God. The lamb was one of Christianity's most ancient symbols — the paschal lamb sacrificed for Israel's deliverance, and Christ himself as 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world' — and its appearance as a riding animal for the infant Christ invested the image with rich symbolic content within an apparently simple pastoral setting. Blake's personal religious symbolism consistently found in childhood innocence and natural simplicity the authentic spiritual state from which adult experience of the world was a fall.

The oil on canvas displays Blake's characteristic linear clarity and flattened composition, with soft, luminous color and bold outlines creating a visionary pastoral scene that transcends conventional religious illustration.