[3] One scholar interprets his colour print Hecate thus: "She is triple, according to mythology: a girl and a boy hide their heads behind her back.

She is attended by a thistle-eating ass, the mournful owl of false wisdom, the head of a crocodile (blood-thirsty hypocrisy), and a cat-headed bat.

"[4]Blake often drew on Michelangelo to create and compose his epic images, including Hecate's, according to a consensus of critics.

Notwithstanding these allusions, critics point out that a contemporary trigger for Blake's inspiration probably was the return popularity of Shakespeare's play Macbeth.

But not only in his poetry The Triple Hecate makes a connection: it is seen as an opposition to his painting Pity, circa 1795, where the piety provides a "possibility of salvation" in the fallen world.

[18] Like other works by Blake, such as The Ghost of a Flea, the picture is part of W. Graham Robertson's private collection and was presented to the Tate Gallery by himself in 1939.