The Ancient of Days

A mighty bearded figure crouches within a blazing sun-disk at the edge of darkness, leaning down to span the void below with a great golden compass. William Blake's Urizen - his stern god of reason and law - is shown imposing measure and limit on the infinite, an act the visionary poet-artist regarded with awe and unease. Made as the frontispiece to his prophetic book Europe, the Ancient of Days fuses sublime grandeur with Blake's private mythology, a thunderous image of creation as both magnificent and a binding of boundless energy.