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In April 1827, a few months before his death, Blake wrote to his friend George Cumberland: "The last work I produced is a Poem entitled Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion. . . . One I have finished. It contains 100 plates but it is not likely that I shall get a Customer for it." Jerusalem was the culmination of Blake's series of great prophetic books, and he had been at work on it from 1804 on, the date on the title page. Of the five known complete copies of the book, four are printed in black ink and uncolored; the copy to which Blake refers as "finished" is the Mellon copy, printed in red-orange ink and lavishly hand-colored in watercolor with touches of gold paint. At Blake's death, this deluxe copy passed to his widow, Catherine, from whom it was obtained by Frederick Tatham, who, in a twenty-four-page biographical sketch of Blake in manuscript that he attached to the copy, described it as containing "some of the most noble conceptions possible to the mind of man" (leaf 5v). The poem, divided into four chapters, tells of the fall of man, represented by Albion, and his ultimate redemption. Of the three plates exhibited here, the first is the final image of the first chapter. It shows the fallen Albion being disemboweled. In a plate depicting the birth of Eve, the figure of the Creator and Savior (bearing the stigmata) hovers above. The third exhibited plate is the penultimate plate of the book, which ends the narrative in an image of the union of contraries in the form of Jehovah (or Christ taking on the patriarchal appearance of Jehovah) embracing an androgynous Jerusalem. Redemption is achieved through reconciliation.

Scott Wilcox

Baskett, John, Jules David Prown, Duncan Robinson, Brian Allen, and William Reese. Paul Mellon's Legacy: A Passion for British Art. New Haven : Yale Center for British Art , 2007, cat. no. 76