A blaze of light bursts from the wall, with glowing letters in it.
Bible in art · Daniel
Belshazzar's Feast
John Martin · 1826
National Gallery of Art, Washington
In 1820 John Martin, a young painter from the north of England, made his name with a huge painting of Belshazzar’s feast; crowds came to see it in London. In 1826 he made this large print of it himself, in mezzotint, and it was coloured by hand.
The banquet fills an endless hall of columns open to a night sky, with a stepped tower in the distance. At the far left a blaze of light breaks from the wall with glowing letters in it. In the middle a man in black points toward it while the guests shrink back.
From the text
- A great feast for a thousand nobles, with wine (Daniel 5:1)
- Gold and silver vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem (Daniel 5:2)
- Fingers wrote on the wall “near the lampstand” (Daniel 5:5)
- Daniel reads the writing: “MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN” (Daniel 5:25)
The artist’s own
- A city of colossal halls, terraces and towers imagined by the painter
- A tall stepped tower in the background, like pictures of the Tower of Babel
- The lampstand drawn as a seven-branched menorah
- Storm clouds, lightning and the moon over the scene
Details
The writing
The man in black
A bearded man stretches his arm toward the writing — the prophet Daniel, who reads it (Daniel 5:25).
The lampstand
A great seven-branched lampstand stands on the wall.
Gold vessels
Gold cups and bowls crowd the banquet table.
A stepped tower
A tall tower rises against the stormy sky.
Serpent column
A snake coils round a column at the edge.
John Martin, British, 1789–1854. National Gallery of Art, Washington (Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Benedict, 1978.86.5) · Hand-colored mixed media intaglio (mezzotint) · NGA Open Access: "Images of these works are available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial, under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)." (NGA open data: published_images.csv openaccess = 1)