Gustave Doré, The Fall of Satan (from John Milton's Paradise Lost)

Though Gustave Doré was best known in his own time as a painter, his early work as a caricaturist led to commissions for illustrating a number of classic books, including works by the English poets Milton and Tennyson. Doré’s talents were especially well-adapted to the task of dramatizing the fall of Satan and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.

The heavens illuminate the earth with white light. Lucifer, the creature of darkness, falls from a night sky and angles toward “bottomless perdition.”

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— Milton, Paradise Lost