William Blake, The Blasphemer c.1800
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This powerful watercolour illustrates lines from Leviticus in the Old Testament. It shows the son of an Israelite woman being stoned for blasphemy. God had told Moses that anyone who ‘blasphemeth the name of the Lord... shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.’
This picture was one of a group of 135 drawings and paintings of biblical subjects by Blake, commissioned by his most loyal patron, Thomas Butts.
September 2004
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