Studio per Il castigo di Caino

Byron published Cain in 1821 and was attacked for blasphemy over it, because the murderer is allowed to argue back at heaven. More than 60 years later a young painter took two lines from that poem, won his first commission from the French state, and sent The Punishment of Cain to the Paris Salon of 1884. This canvas is the trial run for it. The light here is a low grey dusk, and in the finished picture it turns to moonlight. The great walls of the city Cain built give way to the bare frozen country of Nod. Henri Martin was 23, working to Salon rules, and already breaking the angel's face into small separate strokes, the handling his later pictures are known for.