Benjamin West
St. Michael and Satan
1775
Scroll
Benjamin West
St. Michael and Satan
1775
Physical Qualities
Oil on paper mounted on canvas, Framed: 57 1/4 x 41 x 4 1/4 in. (145.4 x 104.1 x 10.8 cm) Sight: 45 1/4 x 28 7/8 in. (114.9 x 73.3 cm)
Credit Line
W. Clagett Emory Bequest Fund, in Memory of his Parents, William H. Emory of A and Martha B. Emory; Friends of the American Wing Fund; Harriet and Jeffrey Legum Fund; and purchase with exchange funds from Bequest of M. Carey Thomas, in Memory of Mary Elizabeth Garrett
Object Number
1999.67
Grasping a lightning bolt, the archangel Michael tramples evil in Benjamin West’s oil study for an altarpiece illustrating a passage from the Bible’s book of Revelation. The impetus for this apocalyptic image was twofold. First, West had absorbed Edmund Burke’s influential treatise Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), which considered how artists might evoke fear and a sense of the supernatural in their work. Second, in 1775, the master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, who had commissioned the altarpiece from West, was advocating a policy of coercion against the American colonies. As an American expatriate painter, West walked a fine line with his British patrons. Here, he lets the viewer decide who was angel and who was devil.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 1999; from Kyser Hollingsworth, Inc., Washington, D.C.; estate of James H. Ricau, 1993; James H. Ricau, Piermont, New York, by 1962; H. Knoedler and Company, New York, by 1957; Potter; from Christie's London, 1949 (sold anonymously)
AMW Reinstallation 2014
American Wing Rotations 2020
American Wing Rotations 2021
American Wing Rotations 2022
American Wing Rotations 2023
American Wing Rotations 2024
Jacobs Reinstallation 2026
American Wing Rotations 2025
Millard F. Rogers, Jr. 'Benjamin West and the Caliph: Two Paintings from Fontill Abbey,' Apollo, 1966, p. 424, fig. 4.
Ruth S. Kraemer, "Drawings by Benjamin West and his Son Raphael Lamar West," New York, 1975, p. 10.
John Dillenberger, "Benjamin West: The Context of His Life's Work...," San Antonio, Texas, 1977, pp. 34,42, pl. 25.
Helmut von Erffa and Alan Staley, "The Paintings of Benjamin West [calalogue raisonné]," New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1986, no. 407 (illustration), p. 395 (illustration p. 85).
Richard York Gallery, "An American Gallery Volume VIII," 1997, Figure 1, ill.
Glenn McNatt, 'An Artful Amalgam,' The Baltimore Sun, July 2, 2002.
Inscribed: Recto: lower right, 'B. West/1776'; Verso: Number A5333 in several places on the strecher; Number 15 on the stretcher and reverse of support; 'PHOTO' stamped twice on strecher; label on side of strecher with numbers A5333 and 39.
On View at the BMA
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