''Belshazzar's Feast'' is an oil painting by British painter John Martin (1789–1854). It was first exhibited at the

British Institution The British Institution (in full, the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; founded 1805, disbanded 1867) was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it ...

in February 1821 and won a prize of £200 () for the best picture. It was so popular that it needed to be protected from the crowds by a railing, and established Martin's fame. In the words of Martin's biographer

William Feaver William Feaver (born 1 December 1942) is a British art critic, curator, artist and lecturer. From 1975–1998 he was the chief art critic of the Observer, and from 1994 a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. His book ''The Pitmen P ...

, he "turned literary references to visual reality". Martin published

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzo ...

engravings in 1826 and 1832. The original painting is now held in a private collection; two smaller contemporaneous "sketches" are held by the

Yale Center for British Art The Yale Center for British Art at Yale University in central New Haven, Connecticut, houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of British art outside the United Kingdom. The collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, rare ...

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is List ...

and the

Wadsworth Atheneum The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...

The subject

The Biblical episode depicted in the painting

Belshazzar's Feast Belshazzar's feast, or the story of the writing on the wall, chapter 5 in the Book of Daniel, tells how Neo-Babylonian royal Belshazzar holds a great feast and drinks from the vessels that had been looted in the destruction of the First Temple. ...

is described in the

Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...

chapter 5. The

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

ian king

Belshazzar Belshazzar ( Babylonian cuneiform: ''Bēl-šar-uṣur'', meaning " Bel, protect the king"; ''Bēlšaʾṣṣar'') was the son and crown prince of Nabonidus (), the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Through his mother, he might have been ...

is said to have defiled the sacred vessels of the enslaved

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

by using them to serve wine at a banquet. The feast was then disturbed by the appearance of a divine hand, which wrote a glowing inscription on a wall the writing on the wallwhich was interpreted by the prophet

Daniel Daniel commonly refers to: * Daniel (given name), a masculine given name and a surname * List of people named Daniel * List of people with surname Daniel * Daniel (biblical figure) * Book of Daniel, a biblical apocalypse, "an account of the acti ...

as a portent of Belshazzar's doom. Belshazzar was killed that night, and

Darius the Mede Darius the Mede is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as King of Babylon between Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great, but he is not known to secular history and there is no space in the historical timeline between those two verified rulers. Belshazzar, w ...

succeeded to his kingdom.

History

The painting is the second piece in a trilogy of paintings by Martin on

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

n themes, starting with his ''The Fall of Babylon'' in 1819, and completed with his '' The Fall of Ninevah'' in 1828. It was inspired by a conversation with the American artist

Washington Allston Washington Allston (November 5, 1779 – July 9, 1843) was an American painter and poet, born in Waccamaw Parish, South Carolina. Allston pioneered America's Romantic movement of landscape painting. He was well known during his lifetime for ...

and perhaps also by a poem by

Thomas Smart Hughes Thomas Smart Hughes (1786–1847) was an English cleric, theologian and historian. Life Born at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, on 25 August 1786, he was the eldest surviving son of Hugh Hughes, curate of Nuneaton, and rector of Hardwick, Northamptonsh ...

. It shows a panoramic view of a cavernous banqueting room with columns on both sides, decorated with

signs of the zodiac The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Within this zodiac be ...

. The hall is filled with crowds of feasting Babylonians and is open to the sky, with the

Hanging Gardens of Babylon The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World listed by Hellenic culture. They were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of tree ...

above, and the

Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis (chapter 11) meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shin ...

and a

ziggurat A ziggurat (; Cuneiform: 𒅆𒂍𒉪, Akkadian: ', D-stem of ' 'to protrude, to build high', cognate with other Semitic languages like Hebrew ''zaqar'' (זָקַר) 'protrude'), ( Persian: Chogha Zanbilچغازنجبیل) is a type of massive ...

visible in the background, lit by the moon revealed by a break in dark swirling clouds. The architecture is inspired by Egyptian, Babylonian and Indian styles. Dressed in black, Daniel stands at the centre of the foreground, interpreting the supernatural writing on the wall of the hall. Belshazzar recoils in astonishment and dread to his right, and others look on in shock and horror. Martin published an accompanying pamphlet with a key to help viewers to interpret the painting and identify the figures and structures. Although popular with the public, Martin's painting was not a critical success. There was appreciation of the magnificent architecture and emotional content, of the scale and bold colours of the work, but criticism of his painterly technique and particularly the execution of the figures.

Charles Lamb Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764� ...

called it vulgar and bombastic. Martin sold the painting to his former master, glass painter William Collins, for 1000

guineas The guinea (; commonly abbreviated gn., or gns. in plural) was a coin, minted in Great Britain between 1663 and 1814, that contained approximately one-quarter of an ounce of gold. The name came from the Guinea region in West Africa, from where m ...

before the exhibition in 1821, and Collins made Martin agree not to reproduce the painting until Collins sold it. The

Duke of Buckingham and Chandos Viscount Cobham is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain that was created in 1718. Owing to its special remainder, the title has passed through several families. Since 1889, it has been held by members of the Lyttelton family. The barony a ...

offered Martin 800 guineas; disappointed, he commissioned Martin to paint '' The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum'' instead. Collins sent the painting on an extensive tour of Britain, and it was wildly successful. By 1826, the accompanying pamphlet had reached its 45th edition. Martin was preparing to publish an engraved version in 1826, when Collins sued under the agreement not to reproduce the painting. Martin successfully claimed that he was reproducing his preliminary sketches, not the finished work, and versions of his engraving were published in 1826, in 1832, and for his ''Illustrations of the Bible'' project in 1835. The painting was bought by Liverpool merchant John Naylor in 1848. It was damaged in 1854 on its journey to Naylor's gallery at

Leighton Hall Leighton Hall may refer to: *Leighton Hall, Lancashire *Leighton Hall, Powys Leighton Hall is an estate located to the east of Welshpool in the historic county of Montgomeryshire, now Powys, in Wales. Leighton Hall is a listed grade I property. ...

near

Welshpool Welshpool ( ) is a market town and Community (Wales), community in Powys, Wales, historically in the Historic counties of Wales, county of Montgomeryshire. The town is from the Wales–England border and low-lying on the River Severn. The c ...

, when the cart transporting it was hit by a train, but the painting was quickly repaired. It was rejected by the

National Gallery The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of more than 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current di ...

as being too large and is now part of a private collection.Myrone, Martin d. John Martin: Apocalypse, London, Tate publishing, 2011, pp. 99–101. . It was exhibited in 2011 at

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in En ...

, next to a half-size () "sketch" made by the artist himself around 1820, now owned by the Yale Center for British Art. Another "sketch" is owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum.

References

''Belshazzar's Feast'', 1820
Yale Centre for British Art *
Large image of the painting

''Belshazzar's Feast'', print by John Martin, 1826
Victoria & Albert Museum
''Belshazzar's Feast'', print by William Martin, 1831
Victoria & Albert Museum
''John Martin, Painter: His Life And Times''
Mary L. Pendered, p. 102–110
''Reclaiming a Plundered Past: Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq''
Magnus T. Bernhardsson, p. 29
John Martin: painting the apocalypse
''The Guardian'', 8 September 2011
John Martin, Plate from "Illustrations to the Bible": ''Belshazzar's Feast'' published 1835
Tate Gallery {{John Martin (painter) 1821 paintings Cultural depictions of Belshazzar Paintings by John Martin Culture of Yale University Paintings of Book of Daniel people Food and drink paintings Oil paintings