Erotic Spirituality in Blake’s Last Judgement

Abstract

In 1808, William Blake painted a Vision of the Last Judgement (Figure 8.1), a watercolour that depicts Jesus shining above and the harlot (called Babylon) glowing below a womblike composition. (The painting is known as the Petworth Last Judgement because it belongs to Petworth House.) Scholars and students comment upon its erotic imagery; in the most extended critical commentary, Steven Goldsmith ruminates upon the condemnation of the Babylon harlot. He says the painting, with the ‘Logos and Babylon … positioned at two ends of a vulva’, is structured around an ‘almost pornographic vaginal gulf’ (148). I suggest, however, that in the Petworth Last Judgement, there is nothing pornographic about a vulva and Babylon is redeemable. Like Christopher Rowland (228-30), I think the Petworth Last Judgement is an image of rebirth, or transformation. By imaginatively engaging with the harlot in Blake’s painting, viewers can participate in that process of transformation.