L'angelo sterminatore e i demoni del male interrompono le orge dei viziosi e degli intemperanti

William Etty had spent years being scolded for his nudes, called indecent and tasteless by critics who thought he was wasting a real gift. This enormous canvas was his answer, an openly moral subject nobody could call frivolous. He worked on it through a grim stretch. In 1830 he was in Paris and saw the July Revolution first-hand, bodies in the streets, and in 1832, the year he finished, cholera swept London and killed thousands. Both seem to have fed the heaped, tumbling figures here, struck down mid-revel as an avenging angel and its demons break up the feast. When it was shown that year, critics who had lectured him about decency suddenly decided he had a moral nature after all. Some read the whole thing as Etty repenting for the very paintings that had made him famous.