世界末日

This is the right-hand panel of the last great work of John Martin's life, a set of three enormous paintings on the end of the world that he made between 1851 and 1853, in his sixties. Its full title is The Great Day of His Wrath, taken from the Book of Revelation. Whole cities are torn loose and hurled into a red abyss as mountains collapse, tiny human figures tumbling among the falling rock. Martin knew the new industrial landscape of northern England, the mines and iron furnaces lit up at night, and something of that burning world hangs over his vision of judgment. After he died in 1854, the three canvases toured Britain, America and Australia for years as a paying spectacle.