The Ancient of Days

1794

Color-printed relief and white-line etching with oil, watercolor, and pen and black ink on paper, plate 23.2 × 16.8 cm. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A bearded figure leans out of a blazing disk and stretches a pair of compasses down into the dark void. It opens one of the illuminated books Blake wrote, printed and colored himself.

Made as the frontispiece to Europe: A Prophecy; this sheet comes from Copy A.
Look at the wind sweeping the figure's white hair and beard to one side, though he crouches in a still circle of light.
The Tate catalogue reads the design as an answer to the frontispiece of a 1729 edition of Newton's Principia.
Blake invented his own gods. This creator, measuring out the world, belongs to a personal mythology from his prophetic books rather than to church teaching.
Part of the Paul Mellon Collection; kept in the print Study Room and shown on request.

Image: Yale Center for British Art (open access) · CC0