Minneapolis Institute of Art

The Just Upright Man is laughed to scorn

William Blake

Date: 1825
Medium: Engraving
Department: European Art
Institution: Minneapolis Institute of Art

Job's first error was admitting Satan the Accuser into his mind. Now that error appears in the outer world, Job is condemned by his friends even as he had condemned his children. The friends separate themselves from him and seek to render themselves holier by berating him. Even Job's wife doubts him momentarily; the cross stands above her now. These events benefit Job. Guiltless, as far as he knows, he appeals to his God for justification. Job's protests, his faith in God, his belief in his innocence and his appeal for pity are relegated to the margins. In the upper corners, two angels struggle upward, despite chains that drag them down. In the lower margin, the cuckoo of slander, the owl of false wisdom clutching a victim and the adder of hate mock the scrolls of true inspiration by implication; this is Blake's personal comment on the critics who berated his works so blindly and unmercifully during his own lifetime. England, Europe

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