“The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun”: William Blake; painting and analysis

“The great red dragon and the woman clothed with the sun”: William Blake; painting and analysis.

The Great Red Dragon (The Great Red Dragon) is a series of paintings by the English painter and poet William Blake (1757-1827), created between 1805 and 1810 to illuminate some passages from the Book of Revelations that mention this unique creature:

And behold the Great Red Dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns on his temples. And his tail swept away a third of the stars from heaven, and cast them upon the earth.

This mention of Great Red Dragon It is, of course, metaphorical; just like the title of that enigmatic book of the Bible: The Book of Revelations or Book of Revelation.

In fact, to reveal means to veil again, that is, to hide something under a new veil; the complete opposite of what we currently understand by revelation; that is, something that is suddenly made manifest. In that case, the appropriate word would be reveal.

If the Book of Revelations intended to hide something under a double veil, the Great Red Dragon of William Blake is responsible for perpetuating that secret.

The great red dragon and the woman dressed in the sun.

In this painting from the series, The great red dragon and the woman dressed in the sun (The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun), we observe how the Great Red Dragon It descends on a woman about to give birth, perhaps to devour her offspring:

Then another sign appeared in the sky: a great red dragon that had seven heads, ten horns, and a crown on each head. With his tail he dragged a third of the stars from heaven, and threw them to the earth. The dragon stopped in front of the woman who was going to give birth, to devour her child as soon as he was born.

Catholic exegesis assumes that this woman is the Virgin Mary, and that her son, Jesus, is the prey that the Lord craves. Great Red Dragon (Satan or Lucifer). However, the image of an impossible creature that wishes to devour newborns is much more similar to the Greek myth of Cronus devouring his children.

William Blake He was a man of symbols, not specific allusions, who introduced the philosophy of romanticism into each of his paintings. Just review the concepts of William Blake about faith to put us on guard against his way of understanding the artistic fact:

Those who William Blake I was trying to represent The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun It is, perhaps, the same thing that is observed in the main characteristics of romanticism: the cosmic battle between good and evil but seen from the perspective of the individual, the subject, the being.

Thus, William Blake interprets the passage from the Book of Revelations through a double allegory:

If faith considers that the Great Red Dragon is a symbol of Satan, that is, the principle of evil in the universe, why is the Woman Clothed with the Sun Is it identified individually in the Virgin Mary?

Some signs show that this association is not entirely exact; for example, that the Woman Dressed in the Sun she is sitting on the earth, but with a crescent, or crescent moon, shining through the folds of her dress; or that her hair imitates the shape of a twelve-pointed crown.

Below, to the right, the faces of humanity emerge and contemplate the scene; and they are precisely the ones who give substance to the vision.

In summary: the Great Red Dragon descends on the Woman Clothed with the Sunwhich is nothing other than the archetype of the woman about to give birth, and not precisely the child of God, but the man as an individual.

The sun radiates on the figure of the Woman, it dresses her in the sun; but the center of that light coincides with the semisphere of the moon on which she rests, surrounding her belly. The darkness is not down in the underworld, but fills the sky like an ominous cloud as the Great Red Dragon descends flapping its wings.

The most curious thing about The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun It is the attitude of humanity. Her desperate faces look not at the woman, but at the Great Red Dragonwhich perhaps they have invoked to exterminate the primordial female.

But God, or that which William Blake I thought like God, he gives women a special gift; something that is easy to lose sight of when we appreciate the painting: the woman has wings, and she is about to launch herself into the air to attack the Great Red Dragon.

That is why the arms of the Great Red Dragon and those of the Woman Clothed with the Sun They form a symmetrical image. After all, for William Blake good and evil are not forces independent of each other, but part of a duality of light and darkness that runs through the entire cosmos.

Beyond this duality, and despite how fascinating the image of the Red Dragonis the Woman Dressed in the Sun the one that prevails, no matter how horrible the circumstances.

Romanticism paintings. I Poems of William Blake.

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