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The Mount of Congregation
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SM XP22. ©Sir John Soane's Museum, London. Photo: Art UK
Joseph Michael Gandy ARA (1771 - 1843)
The Mount of Congregation
1818
Oil on canvas
Height: 148.6cm
Width: 179.7cm
Width: 179.7cm
Museum number: XP22
Not on display
Curatorial note
This painting is a composition inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818, No.936.
Never part of Soane’s collection, this impressive work is Gandy’s imagining of two passages from the 5th Book of Paradise Lost.
‘Pavilions numberless, and sudden reared
celestial tabernacles’ Book 5.653-54
and
‘High on a Hill, far blazing, as a Mount
Raised on a Mount, with pyramids and towers’ Book 5.757-58
At once a vision of Paradise, and a terrifyingly luminous Judgement Seat, it puzzled contemporaries who were of the opinion ‘it is from a Kalaidescope found, it is utterly inexplicable … this is a copy of one of his beatific visions’.
Never part of Soane’s collection, this impressive work is Gandy’s imagining of two passages from the 5th Book of Paradise Lost.
‘Pavilions numberless, and sudden reared
celestial tabernacles’ Book 5.653-54
and
‘High on a Hill, far blazing, as a Mount
Raised on a Mount, with pyramids and towers’ Book 5.757-58
At once a vision of Paradise, and a terrifyingly luminous Judgement Seat, it puzzled contemporaries who were of the opinion ‘it is from a Kalaidescope found, it is utterly inexplicable … this is a copy of one of his beatific visions’.
Provenance
By descent through the Gandy family. Presented to the Museum by the late Dr and Mrs Maurice Saxton in 1979.
Literature
Brian Lukacher, Joseph Gandy An Architectural Visionary in Georgian England, Thames and Hudson, 2006, pp.116-119, fig.128
Exhibition history
Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1818
Presented by Mr and Mrs Maurice Saxton, 1979
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