Artwork

For my last in class paper, my topic was to discuss artwork that had been done to depict Milton’s epic poem. There are more pictures than can be described in 10 pages and not all of them will fit together to make a nice, put together paper. There was one picture that was left out of my paper that I wanted to discuss which I will do so here.

The picture I will be writing about is the following picture. However, if for some reason it cannot be viewed within the blog, it can be seen at the link posted at the end.




(Sorry for the poor quality, please check out the link at the bottom for better quality!)

What hit me as interesting with this image is how different it is from my understanding, and possibly the general understanding, of Eve taking the fruit from the serpent.

I never envisioned the serpent to be wrapped all around Eve’s body. This picture has the serpent wrapped all up around her body. The artist takes a different than normal view and perhaps a new interpretation of the text written, both by Milton and even in the Bible.

The second part of this picture that grabbed my attention as different is how Eve is receiving the fruit from the serpent. In this picture the serpent is seen feeding her the fruit. I never imagined that to be how it went. I don’t know my Bible like many do, but I always thought the Bible said Eve took the fruit and ate. It could be taken that she took the fruit from the serpent’s mouth, but I’m not sure how common that thought is.

Whoever the artist is of this work, they were certainly trying to think outside of the box as to the standard belief. This artist may firmly believe that this is how this event played out. Not to be cruel, but odds are, the artist has passed on and we may never quite what he was thinking.

Special thanks to the darkness visible website: http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/darknessvisible/index.html Once again, if the picture is not loading, go to this link as the picture I’ve discussed is on the homepage.