Nebuchadnezzar (Blake)

Taken from the Book of Daniel, the legend of Nebuchadnezzar tells of a ruler who through hubris lost his mind and was reduced to animalistic madness[1] and eating "grass as oxen".

[2] According to the biographer Alexander Gilchrist (1828–1861), in Blake's print the viewer is faced with the "mad king crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror.

The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet.

[11] John Clark Strange bought Butts's prints on 29 June 1853 and later acquired the rest of the collection sold to Henry George Bohn.

"[13] Kenneth Clark identified the earlier image as a book illustration of a werewolf by Lucas Cranach the Elder,[14] although a closer similarity is the small figure of the saint in Albrecht Dürer's 1496 engraving The Penance of St. John Chrysostom.

[21] Alexander Gilchrist believed that "the metallic tinting of the moss-grown crags is rendered almost as successfully as in 'Newton', and the printing throughout the picture is well carried out, with none of the opaque oily surfaces which occur in some others of the series".