Satan Starts from the Touch of Ithuriel's Spear (1776): Art, History and Details

Satan Starts from the Touch of Ithuriel's Spear (1776) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Henry Fuseli (Swiss, 1741–1825).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Henry Fuseli's lifelong interest in the work of the English poet John Milton (1608-1674) inspired many drawings that interpreted passages from Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). This early example illustrates the moment when the angels Ithuriel and Zephon discover Satan disguised as a toad in the bower where Adam and Eve are sleeping. Ithuriel forces Satan to reveal himself by prodding him with a spear. The lion in the background alludes to an earlier passage in the poem, when Satan takes on the shape of the beast in order to spy on the couple.

Object facts

• Title: Satan Starts from the Touch of Ithuriel's Spear
• Date: 1776
• Creator attribution: Henry Fuseli (Swiss, 1741–1825)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and gray wash
• Dimensions: Sheet: 30.9 x 42.5 cm (12 3/16 x 16 3/4 in.); Secondary Support: 31 x 42.7 cm (12 3/16 x 16 13/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1954.365

A detail from the museum

This drawing is one of three almost identical drawings depicting the same scene from Paradise Lost; the other sheets are in the collections of the National Gallery, Stockholm, and the British Museum, London.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Wartmann, Wilhelm. Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741-1825: zur Zweihundertjahrfeier und Gedächtnisausstellung. Exh. Cat. Zürich: Kunsthaus Zürich, 1941.
• "Accessions of American and Canadian Museums." Art Quarterly 17 (Winter 1954): 412.
• The World of Benjamin West. Exh. Cat. Allentown, PA: Allentown Art Museum, 1962.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.