![John Martin - Pandemonium [1841] by Gandalf's Gallery](http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2864/11620382104_63ec989450.jpg)
This painting represents the climax of Martin's interest in Milton's Paradise Lost, an important element of his development of the 'historical landscape,’ based on the large canvases of J.M.W. Turner of the early years of the nineteenth century, in particular The Fifth Plague of Egypt (exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1800) and Apollo and Python (Royal Academy 1811). Turner himself looked back to Richard Wilson and, indirectly, to Claude and to Nicolas Poussin, above all his Deluge which Turner had studied at the Louvre during his visit to Paris in 1802. Martin (1789 - 1854) made something special of the genre, emphasising its theatrical elements in an individual technique based in part on his experience of glass and china-painting. He himself inspired rivalry and emulation among a number of his near contemporaries such as Francis Danby, Samuel Colman and Thomas Cole, anticipating the last-named in his grouping of works in pairs or threes.
[Musée du Louvre, Paris - Oil on canvas, 123.2 x 184.4 cm]