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The Grand Paradise Lost Mural

Orchestral Music by Brian Olphie

Full for brochure.jpg

6 x 9 inch Postcards, Ten for $15

11 x 17 poster $20, signed $100

24 x 36 Giclee Print on archival paper signed and numbered $3000

Full size 39 x 54 Giclee print on canvas, signed and numbered $10,000

milton@wahcenter.net

This 39 x 52 inch oil on canvas was completed Easter 2019. It represents the incipient point of the fall of mankind. Adam and Eve have eaten of the forbidden fruit and now recognize their erotic attraction to one another. Terrance's poem on the pavillion reads:

 

To all a gloried story take,

and with a gentle hand,

Take up the book where dreams are twined,

In Edens's ancient land.

​

In areas around the central figures are scenes from Milton’s grand epic. Upper right is Earth hanging in a golden chain, “this  pendant world.” The Son of God points to Adam and Eve and downward into Satan's orbit. He is about to harrow Hell. You can see the punctures from the nails in his hands and feet, his sacrifice for the sins of Adam and Eve. Satan has been tossed “headlong flaming from the ethereal sky.” Death has a "dart" for one arm pointing at Adam and Eve. Death is bisexual with a huge maw in his belly voraciously devouring humans as he joyfully presides over Hell. Sin is admiring Satan as he rallies his admiring troops. The artist  Bienvenido Bones Banez is painting Satan in his glory. Lower left, Milton recites as his daughter records. She has just written, "Of man's disobedience..." Along the bottom are various foibles, a white rabbit, a fairy ring, watermelons, a bird of paradise. The stream runs from the fountain of Hell through Eden to where on the lower left Eve is gazing into the water admiring herself.  She carries the seed of Satan within her, id est, the sin of vanity. We see Blake doing a sketch of Adam and Eve. Peter Dizozza is playing his Paradise Lost suite on piano. Eve leans against the tree, postlapsarian, nursung Cain. Adam, forlorn, tills the field. Central is the heavenly muse,  Yuko Nii, on her harp. In the Pavilion is Robert Wickenheiser, Benedictine monk and greatest Milton collector.  Behind the pavilion on the hills are Cambridge University, St. Peter’s Basilica, Solomon’s Temple, and The Cruxifiction. God, upper left, oversees the wonderful story.  Rosy Dawn and  Ebony Night float above the pavilion blessing the story with sunrise and stars.

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