The Archangel Raphael with Adam and Eve (Illustration to Milton's "Paradise Lost")

Thomas Butts was a clerk in the government office that kept the army's muster rolls, and for years he was Blake's steadiest buyer. In 1808 Blake painted him a set of 12 large watercolours from Milton's Paradise Lost. He had done the same subjects a year earlier, at about half the size, for a clergyman named Joseph Thomas, and for Butts he worked them out again on bigger sheets. Nine of the 12 have been in Boston since the museum bought them in 1890. This one comes from Book Five. God sends the archangel Raphael down to Eden to warn Adam and Eve that an enemy is loose, and Adam asks him to stay and eat with them in their bower. Blake seats the angel on the right, his tall wings rising to a point above his head and his arms raised. Adam sits listening on the left, and Eve stands between them by a table laid with fruit. Far behind them on a hill stands the forbidden tree, thorns on its branches and the serpent already wound around its trunk.