Frontispiece
Los Entering a Gothic Arch

This is the first of the one hundred plates that make up Jerusalem. It shows Los, the personification of the poetic imagination, passing through a gothic arch. Los is dressed like a London night watchman, but his sandals strike an anachronistic note, marking him out as a prophetic figure. On closer inspection the lantern in his right hand turns out to be a miniature sun, as described in Blake's lines 'Los took his globe of fire to search the interior of Albion's bosom'.

For Blake, the Gothic (Westminster Abbey) represented true religion, while the Baroque (St Paul's) symbolised the empty forms of state religion. (Compare Jerusalem, Plate 84). Here then the gothic arch represents truth.

On a simpler level, the door represents the beginning of the poem, while the austere greys and browns of the stone wall serve to increase the shock and excitement of the brilliantly colourful plates that follow.