They stand in the centre, Job holding a harp.
Bible in art · Job
The Book of Job, plate 21: So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the beginning
William Blake · 1825
The Cleveland Museum of Art
The last of the 21 plates of William Blake’s Job engravings (1825).
Blake repeats the composition of the first plate and turns it round: the family now stands and plays the instruments that hung silent in the tree, the sun rises where the moon was, and the tent-shaped border returns. Under the picture he engraved the last verses of the book.
From the text
- “So the LORD blessed Job’s latter days more than his first” (Job 42:12)
- Job saw his children and their children to the fourth generation (Job 42:16)
- “Job died, old and full of years” (Job 42:17)
The artist’s own
- The family playing the instruments of plate 1
- Sunrise and moon swapped from the first plate
Details
Job and his wife
Trumpets
Sons at the left raise trumpets and horns.
Sunrise
The sun rises at the right; a crescent moon shines at the left.
The altar
In the border, an altar with flames and a verse from Hebrews.
William Blake, British, 1757–1827. The Cleveland Museum of Art (Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Prasse Collection, 1963.303.22) · Engraving (proof impression) · Cleveland Museum of Art Open Access: Collection API record "share_license_status": "CC0" (Creative Commons Zero, https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).