Ancient Night

In this work, inspired by Henry Fuseli’s ‘The Great Father and Ancient Night’ (c.1810), the last vestige of an ancient society huddles at the precipice of a sacred feminine obelisk amidst a deluge, illustrating a scene from Armstrong’s poem The Art of Preserving Heath:

Time shakes the stable Tyranny of Thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old;
And all those worlds that role around the sun,
The sun himself, shall die; and ancient Night
Again involve the desolate abyss:
Till the great Father thro’ the lifeless gloom
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
For thro’ the regions of unbound space,
Where unconfin’d omnipotence has room,
Being, in various systems, fluctuates still
Between creation and abhorr’d decay;
It ever did; perhaps and ever will.
New worlds are still emerging from the deep;
The old descending, in their turns to rise
(B.II, 551-566).

An archangel copied from Giambattista Tiepolo’s ‘The Virgin and Child with Simon Stock’ (c.1749) personifies the emergence of new worlds. Figures representing ‘new creation and abhorr’d decay’ are inspired by Pontormo’s drawing of the ‘Glorification of Christ and the Creation of Eve’ (c.1550).