大洪水之前的世界

For this picture William Etty went to Milton's Paradise Lost, to the moment when the archangel shows Adam visions of the future, among them the heedless world just before the Great Flood. Etty spreads Milton's stages of courtship across the canvas: men choosing partners from a ring of dancing women, one dragging his chosen bride away, another couple already settling into married ease, everyone lost in pleasure. Behind them a dark storm is gathering, the deluge that will soon sweep them all off. When it went on show at the Royal Academy in 1828 it drew large crowds and split the critics sharply, some dazzled by the flesh and colour, others put off by exactly the same thing.