Adam and Eve Entertaining the Angel Raphael

Martin's Adam and Eve Entertaining the Angel Raphael from around 1823 illustrates an episode from Milton's Paradise Lost in which the archangel Raphael visits Adam and Eve before the Fall, warning them of Satan's rebellion. The subject allowed Martin to deploy his characteristic contrast between paradise's perfection—lush vegetation, golden light, architectural grandeur—and the shadow of coming catastrophe that Milton's narrative carries. Raphael's angelic visit was a subject of considerable ambiguity in Milton—the perfect world is already under threat—and Martin's version typically positions his tiny human figures within an overwhelming natural and architectural setting that asserts the vast scale of creation relative to human insignificance. The work belongs to the fertile early 1820s period when his reputation was at its height.

The Edenic landscape is rendered with Martin's characteristic combination of vast scale and precise detail. The small figures of Adam, Eve, and the angel are set within a paradisal landscape of overwhelming beauty and complexity.