Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga (1533–1594)

The Spanish-Chilean poet Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, author of La Araucana, receives a visionary portrait from Blake around 1800 at Manchester Art Gallery. Ercilla's epic poem about the Spanish conquest of Chile combined firsthand military experience with sympathetic portrayal of indigenous resistance—qualities that would have resonated with Blake's own anticolonial sympathies. Like the other poet portraits in the series, this is an imaginative creation rather than a historical likeness.

Blake's imagined portrait conveys the warrior-poet through idealized physiognomy and a sense of visionary intensity in the gaze. The watercolor technique maintains his characteristic balance of precise linear definition and luminous color. The face emerges from a relatively neutral background, its features simplified to an almost archetypal quality.