Pandemonium

The first recorded owner of this canvas, shown at the Royal Academy in London in 1841, was Benjamin Hick, an engineer from Bolton who built steam locomotives. Martin took the subject from Milton's Paradise Lost, the moment a vast palace rises out of the ground of Hell to house the council of the fallen angels. Milton coined a word for that building, Pandemonium, the place of all the demons. Satan stands on the rock at the right with his shield and spear, and the colonnade runs off behind him across a lake of fire. Martin designed the frame himself, carved with serpents and dragons. Hick died in 1842, and in 1843 the picture was offered at his sale in Manchester alongside its companion piece, The Celestial City. The Louvre bought it in 2006.