ABSTRACT
Since the first illustrated edition of Paradise Lost (1688), more than 150 artists have attempted to bring its invisible worlds to visible life. All but a handful of these visual interpreters have been men: from John Baptist Medina to Edward Burney, from William Blake to John Martin and Gustav Doré. But four remarkable women, all less known than their male counterparts, have created some of the most insightful visual readings of Milton’s text, each revealing new aspects of the poet’s vision. The first, Jane Giraud, published her Flowers of Milton anonymously in 1846, when botanical painting was regarded as the only appropriate art form for ladies. Ninety years later, between 1935 and 1937, Carlotta Petrina and Mary Elizabeth Groom produced two illustrated editions of the poem that rival Blake’s in their revisionary power. And in 1991, through her Snake Path project at the University of California, San Diego, Alexis Smith turned the poem inside out – in a gigantic installation that is neither an image nor a series of images, but literally a journey.
