The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun

The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, contains a series of warnings to Christians to maintain and guard their faith, then relates a series of allegorical episodes that demonstrate the consequences of spiritual defection. Blake’s "The Great Red Dragon and Woman Clothed in the Sun" illustrates passages that describe a “an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads” who descends upon “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” The dragon represents Satan. His mission is to exact revenge on the woman who has given birth to a follower of God who will spread the Christian faith. 

Sunlight bathes the woman’s figure and catches in the crescent sliver of moon on which she rests. Darkness and shadow fill the sky above like a storm cloud as the dragon’s wings stir a great wind and sweep her hair upward, flamelike. Below, a rising deluge, invoked by the dragon and intended to engulf the woman, overwhelms the figures of hapless souls. As the devil hovers to witness her demise, God grants her wings that carry her to safety. Yet the powerful image of the dragon’s outstretched arms and hers arcing toward each other in mirror image suggest that good and evil are a duality, like the dark and light sides of the moon, rather than completely independent forces. 

The earth will open up to swallow the water, and the thwarted dragon will fly away to wage war against the woman’s progeny, the followers of God. For Blake, it is spiritual power — the purity and goodness represented by the woman — that always prevails, however horrific the circumstances.