Edmund Spenser (c.1552–1599)

Edmund Spenser, the Elizabethan poet who wrote The Faerie Queene, appears in one of Blake's series of poet portraits painted around 1800, now at Manchester Art Gallery. Blake, himself a poet as well as a painter, created these imagined likenesses of literary predecessors as acts of creative homage. No authentic portrait of Spenser survives, so Blake's image is a visionary reconstruction rather than a copy of an existing likeness. Blake's technique of 'fresco' painting—applying tempera over chalk grounds—was a personal invention reflecting his conviction that fresco was the medium of the ancients, superior to the oil painting he associated with moral corruption and materialism.

Blake renders the imagined portrait with the firm outline and clear coloring characteristic of his figural style. The face is constructed from Blake's imagination rather than historical sources, giving it the idealized quality of a poetic vision rather than a documented likeness. His watercolor technique combines precise drawing with luminous washes of color.