Chalk, ink and watercolour on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Art Fund
Illustrations to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39" aria-label="More by William Blake" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Blake</a>
Punishment Thieves
Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the Art Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the Art Fund 1919
actions: postures and motions
adults
animals: reptiles
birth to death
contorted
crime and punishment
crime and punishment
Dante, ‘Divine Comedy: Inferno’
death
diseases and conditions
female
group
groups
Hell
Hell
Judaeo-Christian imagery
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
male
man
mythical, religious, fictional
nudes
pain
people
places
pool
punishment
religion and belief
snake
society
thief
water: inland
woman
work and occupations
<p>The heavy musculature of these female figures creates a gender ambiguity that may have implied moral degeneracy to a 19th-century audience. The contorted central body offers a parody of the graceful <i>contraposto</i> of classical statues, while the other cropped or truncated figures lounge about licentiously. Dante describes the thieves being bitten by snakes, creatures that Lavater associates with ‘cunning and treachery’. Here, however, the snakes appear to emanate from the women’s genitals, suggesting that their criminal activity has given birth to an aberration.</p><p><em>Gallery label, March 2011</em></p>
paper unique chalk ink watercolour
8 July 2002 – 1 October 2003
2003-10-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
William Blake Body and Soul
Collection based display
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
2002-07-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
Body and Soul
Collection based display
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
2006-02-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-02-15
Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination
Exhibition
18 October 2008 – 5 April 2009
2009-04-05
18 October 2008 – 19 April 2009
2009-04-19
2008-10-18
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2008-10-18
Blake and Collins
Collection based display
15 March 2010 – 27 June 2010
2010-06-27
15 March 2010 – 27 June 2010
2010-06-27
2010-03-15
Musée d’Orsay (Paris, France)
2010-03-15
Crime et Châtiment. De Goya à Picasso
Loan-out
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
2010-11-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-11-11
Blake and Physiognomy
Collection based display
1 November 2011 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
1 November 2011 – 19 February 2012
2012-02-19
2011-11-01
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
3 July 2012 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
2012-07-03
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
2011-11-01
Blake Exhibition
Loan-out
29 October 2024 – 30 September 2025
2025-09-30
30 October 2024 – 2 February 2025
2025-02-02
2024-10-30
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
1 September 2025 – 31 January 2026
2026-01-31
2025-09-01
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
1 March 2026 – 31 August 2026
2026-08-31
2026-03-01
External
2024-10-29
William Blake and the Age of Romantic Fantasy: British Art & Imagination
Loan-out
The Punishment of the Thieves
support: 372 × 527 mm
frame: 602 × 745 × 22 mm
Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a>, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 1919
<p>The heavy musculature of these female figures creates a gender ambiguity that may have implied moral degeneracy to a 19<sup>th</sup>-century audience. The contorted central body offers a parody of the graceful <i>contraposto</i> of classical statues, while the other cropped or truncated figures lounge about licentiously. Dante describes the thieves being bitten by snakes, creatures that Lavater associates with ‘cunning and treachery’. Here, however, the snakes appear to emanate from the women’s genitals, suggesting that their criminal activity has given birth to an aberration. 
<br/></p>

Display caption
2011-03-18T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-punishment-of-the-thieves-n03364" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03364</span></a> <b>The Punishment of the Thieves</b> 1824–7
<br/></p>
<p>N 03364 / B 812 <i>102</i>
<br/>Black chalk, pen and watercolour 372×527 (14 5/8×20 3/4)
<br/>Inscribed ‘Hell’ in pencil t.r. running vertically and, on reverse in pencil, ‘N20 next at p79’ t.c. and ‘80’ t.l., turned through a right-angle
<br/>Watermarked ‘WE’
<br/>Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from the National Art-Collections Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the National Art-Collections Fund 1919
<br/>PROVENANCE As for <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-dante-and-virgil-penetrating-the-forest-n03351" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03351</span></a>
<br/>EXHIBITED Tate Gallery (42), Manchester (47), Nottingham (41) and Edinburgh (70) 1913–14, all as ‘Unidentified Subject of Dantesque Character’; <i>English Painting</i> Paris 1938 (165); Paris (repr.), Antwerp, Zurich (repr.) and Tate Gallery 1947 (29 vi)
<br/>LITERATURE ? Rossetti 1863, p.216 under no.101, and 1880, p.227 under no.123; Collins Baker in <i>Huntington Library Quarterly</i>, IV, 1940–1, p.365, repr.p.361 (reprinted in Essick 1973, pp.121–2, pl.44); Roe 1953, pp.101–4, 200–1 no.102, repr.; Klonsky 1977, p.119, repr.; Klonsky 1980, pp.148–9, pl.50; Butlin 1981, p.589 no.812 102; Gizzi 1983, p.128 repr.; Fuller in <i>Art History</i> 1988, pp.369–70
<br/></p>
<p>This <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a> is almost certainly a general view of the pit of thieves, the seventh pit of the eighth circle, as described in <i>Inferno</i> XXIV, 77–95, though no specific incident is depicted; another watercolour from the series, in the National Gallery of Victoria (Butlin 1981, no.812 <i>47</i>
<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>recto</span></a>, repr. Roe 1953, pl.47, Klonsky 1980, pl.49 and Gizzi 1983, p.127) gives a similarly generalized impression. There are seven further <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> from the two Cantos dealing with the thieves, who seem to have had a particular interest for Blake.
<br/>
<br/>Roe, on the erroneous assumption that all the figures shown are female, suggests that the drawing is an <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/allegory" title="Glossary definition for 'Allegory'"><span>allegory</span></a> of Woman after the Fall with only a general reference to the <i>Inferno</i>: Woman, having accepted the help of the Serpent of Materialism to dominate Man, has here become its victim. Fuller sees a sexual suggestion in the serpents in Blake's designs showing the punishment of the thieves (see also <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-serpent-attacking-buoso-donati-verso-a-man-with-a-transparent-hood-over-his-head-n03361" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03361</span></a>), and sees the rape by serpents as a negation of the victims' identities, which is of course the theme of these designs in which human beings turn into serpents and vice versa.
<br/>
<br/>The figures in this watercolour are particularly Michelangelo-esque in the style and Collins Baker suggests that the figure of the standing woman leaning over in the centre is derived from an <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraving</span></a> after Michelangelo's ‘Last Judgement’ (a detail repr.1940–1, p.361; 1973, pl.45).</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-05T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults animals: reptiles birth to death contorted crime and punishment crime and punishment Dante, ‘Divine Comedy: Inferno’ death diseases and conditions female group groups Hell Hell Judaeo-Christian imagery literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) male man mythical, religious, fictional nudes pain people places pool punishment religion and belief snake society thief water: inland woman work and occupations