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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Pandemonium (painting)

painting by John Martin

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ18939074 ↗
Source-derived summary

Pandemonium is an oil painting on canvas by the English artist John Martin, from 1841. It is held at the Louvre, in Paris.

History and description

It combines landscape painting with literature, depicting a scene featuring Pandæmonium inspired by the 1667 poem Paradise Lost by John Milton. Reflecting the Romantic style of the era, Martin also produced engravings featuring a similar scene. It was displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1841 at the National Gallery in London. The painting is now in the collection of the Louvre in Paris, which acquired it in 2006.

A companion painting The Celestial City and the River of Bliss was also exhibited in 1841.

See also

Benjamin Hick

Paradise Lost in popular culture

References

Bibliography

Bacon, Simon (ed.) Female Identity in Contemporary Fictional Purgatorial Worlds. Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.

Boucanier, Thierry.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pandemonium (painting)” is painting by John Martin. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pandemonium, painting and John, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1841, 1667, 2006, 2025—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1841-01-01. For this dossier, Pandemonium, painting and John is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “painting by John Martin” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18939074. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1667, 2006 and 2025.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Pandemonium (painting)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Pandemonium (painting) primary sources, Pandemonium (painting) archive and Pandemonium research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Pandemonium (painting)”?
  2. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Pandemonium (painting)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.