....among the most breathtakingly beautiful are William Blake‘s illustrations for John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Blake created 3 different sets of artwork for the Milton classic: one in 1807, at the age of 50, under a commission by the Reverend Joseph Thomas; one in 1808, commissioned by Blake’s patron Thomas Butts; and one in 1822, commissioned by John Linnell, the same patron who facilitated Blake’s stunning illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy. The first two sets contained 12 paintings each; the Linnell set was incomplete, with only 3 finished works surviving to this day. Even though Blake created all of the Paradise Lost paintings late in life, Milton was his greatest influence and the writer whose work he illustrated more than any other. ...however one may feel about religion, there is something undeniably and immeasurably powerful about Blake’s paintings, an ineffable magic that sparks its very own source of divinity. (http://ashetler.soup.io/tag/out%20of%20print)