Art Institute of Chicago
The Canterbury Pilgrims
William BlakeLinkedCulture matchlcp-50195230d101
- Date
- 1810
- Medium
- Line engraving on cream laid paper
- Culture
- England
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Object ID
- 117595
Those with devout hearts set out on medieval pilgrimages, but these journeys could also be experienced in social fellowship. The visionary English artist William Blake’s enormous frieze contains all 29 of Geoffrey Chaucer’s boisterous Canterbury Tales pilgrims, as well as a portrait of the author himself. In Chaucer’s book, each character tells stories while passing time along the way from London to Canterbury Cathedral, a pilgrimage route that rivaled the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Blake devoted reams of paper to advertise this print, describing Chaucer’s Tales as “the physiognomy or elements of universal human life.”
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Linked open data
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- Object type
- AAT300041273
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