Esoteric Art

Tuberculosis, syphilis, breast cancer, and diphtheria from Richard Tennant Cooper’s series of symbolic paintings depicting death and disease, 1920s. A official war artist, Cooper painted these after returning from World War I before moving to commercial work.

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Seven Deadly Sins, Published by Hieronymus Cock, 1558: ENVY, GLUTTONY, GREED, LUST, PRIDE, SLOTH, WRATH & THE LAST JUDGEMENT

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Henry Wellcome commissioned this watercolor from R. Cooper in 1912, depicting an unconscious man being attacked by demons with surgical instruments. The painting is meant to represent the effects of chloroform on the human body. Source: The Wellcome Collection

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Art depicting the apocalypse based on the astrological predictions in the magazine Raphael’s Almana, circa 1832. Raphael, whose pen name was meant to invoke the power of the archangel of the same name, made grand predictions as opposed to personal ones.

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