When the Almighty Was Yet with Me

Painter, poet and engraver, William Blake was an eccentric visionary and ardent nonconformist known for his mystical themes and innovative forms. His agile and elongated figures, influenced by Gothic sculpture and Michelangelo, are often pictured floating in a non-material world, adorned with symbols from his complex personal mythology. Blake's Book of Job integrates image and design with biblical texts that reconstruct the Old Testament in New Testament terms. The Job narrative, in which Satan tortures the upright Everyman in a test of faith, mirrors Blake's own artistic vision. Blake was deeply opposed to academic art, and in his interpretation of the tale Job is transformed from despair to redemption through a spiritual belief in the power of individual imagination.