Who painted God Judging Adam?

William Blake painted God Judging Adam in 1795.

What Bible passage does God Judging Adam depict?

God Judging Adam depicts the biblical scene from Genesis 3:17-19.

God Judging Adam by William Blake

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This is a hand-finished relief etching, printed on paper from a copper plate. The broken texture visible along the light grey outline of God's right arm was produced as the printing plate was lifted off the paper.

Blake's figure of God resembles Urizen, a tyrannical law-maker in Blake's own mythology. God holds his sceptre in his right hand here but, because images are reversed during printing, Blake would have had to show it in God's left hand on the copper printing plate.

Details

Artist: William Blake
Created: 1795
Medium: relief etching, ink and watercolour on paper
Dimension: 53cm × 43cm
Passage: Genesis 3:17-19

Found in: Genesis, Genesis 3, 18th century

Genesis 3:17-19

17 To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life.

18 It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:17-19 · World English Bible

The artist

William Blake

1757 - 1827

London

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. What he called his prophetic works were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away…

Resources

Blake's 'God Judging Adam' Rediscovered

There are two particular problems concerning William Blake's large colour-prints of 1795: first, whether their at first sight dis-parate subjects can be related to a single unifying theme, and, second...