Moses and the Burning Bush, from Illustrations of the Bible

Moses and the Burning Bush, from Illustrations of the Bible — John Martin. 1833.

Medium: Mezzotint in black on ivory wove paper. Dimensions: Image: 19 × 29 cm (7 1/2 × 11 7/16 in.); Plate: 26.8 × 35.7 cm (10 9/16 × 14 1/16 in.); Sheet: 32.9 × 41.6 cm (13 × 16 7/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

The visionary Romantic painter John Martin’s Illustrations of the Bible (1831–35) boasts some of the most dramatic mezzotints of the 19th century. This series enthusiastically embraced J. M. W. Turner’s “historical” category from the Liber Studiorum (1807–1819). Yet “Mad” Martin eschewed Turner’s sepia tonality for a deep, velvet black periodically ripped asunder by lightning bolts. He engraved over 100 mezzotints, with special attention paid to the light and dark contrasts of Old Testament miracles and disasters. Although the series remained unfinished, his taste for elaborate destruction was sometimes well remunerated: when his gigantic oil painting Belshazzar’s Feast (1821; private collection) was put on view soon after being made, it attracted 50,000 paying viewers.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.