The Canterbury Pilgrims
1810
Medium
Line engraving on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 29.5 × 92 cm (11 5/8 × 36 1/4 in.); Plate: 30 × 92.5 cm (11 13/16 × 36 7/16 in.); Sheet: 36.8 × 96.5 cm (14 1/2 × 38 in.)
Classification
engraving
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
117595
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Those with devout hearts set out on medieval pilgrimages, but these journeys could also be experienced in social fellowship. The visionary English artist William Blake’s enormous frieze contains all 29 of Geoffrey Chaucer’s boisterous Canterbury Tales pilgrims, as well as a portrait of the author himself. In Chaucer’s book, each character tells stories while passing time along the way from London to Canterbury Cathedral, a pilgrimage route that rivaled the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Blake devo...
About the Artist
William Blake · 1757–1827
William Blake (1757–1827) stands as one of the most visionary and unconventional artists in British history, a poet-painter-printmaker whose mystical imagination and radical vision profoundly shaped the Romantic movement. Born in London's Soho district, Blake experienced visions from childhood—claiming to see angels in trees at age eight—and these spiritual encounters would guide his art throughou...