John Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan and the Birth of Sin (Book II, 746-758) Painting no. 6 from The Milton Gallery

Satan and the Birth of Sin, from Fuseli's Milton Gallery series, depicts the moment in Paradise Lost Book II when Satan encounters his daughter Sin — born from his own skull — and her son Death at the gates of Hell. Fuseli produced over forty paintings for his ambitious Milton Gallery project (exhibited 1799), which aimed to do for Milton what Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery had done for Shakespeare. The subject is among the most terrifying in English literature: Sin as a beautiful serpent-woman, Death as a formless shadow, Satan as dark grandeur. Fuseli renders this infernal family with his characteristic combination of beauty and horror.

The composition is dramatically lit from an unseen source, emphasizing Sin's serpentine beauty against the murk of Hell. Fuseli's elongated figures and extreme poses push neoclassical conventions toward Expressionist distortion. The Death figure is deliberately undefined — a presence rather than a form — making it more frightening.