Demosthenes (384–322 BC)

The great Athenian orator Demosthenes receives a visionary portrait from Blake around 1800 at Manchester Art Gallery, extending the poet series to encompass classical rhetoric. Demosthenes, who overcame a speech impediment to become the greatest orator of antiquity, embodied the power of the spoken word that Blake valued alongside the written. The classical bust portraits that survived gave Blake more historical basis for this likeness than for many of his imagined poet portraits.

Blake gives Demosthenes the powerful, determined physiognomy appropriate to a man who trained himself into eloquence through sheer willpower. The classical subject is rendered without archaeological pedantry, Blake favoring his own visionary idiom over historical reconstruction. Strong, definite lines define the features with a sculptural clarity that suggests Blake's admiration for Greek art.