Ma`rifat Adyan

A part of the artists' works has always been dedicated to human’s desire to achieve justice at the end of the world and thinking about how is the life after death. Despite the ambiguities of the Jewish and Christian scriptures regarding the final fate of the wicked people, hell and the punishment of sinners are mentioned in various verses of the Old and especially the New Testament. Therefore, the Bible has always been one of the sources of inspiration for artists to create and produce works of art with religious themes. In addition to religious texts and traditions, some other factors such as the political and cultural climate at the time of the production of the artworks have had a significant impact on the artist’s view towards hell and the apocalypse. This article examines how much Europe’s paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries are loyal to religion – studying the works of prominent artists of that era about Hell, namely William Blake, John Martin and Gustave Dore-, using an analytical-comparative method. Examining various verses of the Old and New Testaments, it seems that the adaptation of the artwork to the Holy Text, in many cases, is more in the type of sin than the type of punishment considered for that sin; and in addition to adapting religious themes, artists have been inspired by each other, by literary manuscripts, by political, cultural and artistic events, and finally by their own minds to create the image of hell and the day of judgment.