The Canterbury Pilgrims

Prints and Drawings

1810

William Blake
English, 1757-1827

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 devoted reams of paper to advertise this print, describing Chaucer’s Tales as “the physiognomy or elements of universal human life.”

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: William Blake
Title: The Canterbury Pilgrims
Place: England (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 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.)
Credit Line: Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Reference Number: 1991.613
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/117595/manifest.json

Bindman 477

Keynes 17 II/V

Binyon 100

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