"Plate 13 [Plague] from Europe: A Prophesy," relief etching with watercolor and oil on paper (William Blake, 1794) © Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library International (Bridgeman YBA 223024) / Reproduced with permission.

The British Romantic poet, painter, and engraver William Blake was born in a house on Broad Street, in London, in 1757. The Blake family Broad Street house was at the end of a row that had been built over a section of the Pesthouse Close, where victims of the Great Plague of 1665 had been housed and then buried. The fact that the Blake family house sat almost on the very grounds of the historical 1665 Pesthouse must have heightened the importance of this to the artist and may well have led to this illustration, which is thought to refer to the Great Plague of 1665. The bellman represents the shadow of death, which is striking down the female on the right. This illustration is one page of his illuminated book Europe: A Prophesy, which is a long poem, full of imagery and symbolism. The book itself is one of Blake’s cycles of continental prophecies, which encompass America: A Prophesy (1793); Europe: A Prophesy (1794); and The Song of Los (containing Africa and Asia) (1795). (Mary and Michael Grizzard, cover-art editors)