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The Great Red Dragon Paintings are a series of watercolour paintings by the English poet and painter William Blake, painted between 1805 and 1810.[1] It was during this period that Blake was commissioned to create over a hundred paintings intended to illustrate books of the Bible. These paintings depict 'The Great Red Dragon' in various scenes from the Book of Revelation.
And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth.
— (Rev. 12:3–4, KJV)
The paintings
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun
Height: 43.7 cm, Width: 34.8 cm[2]
Housed at the Brooklyn Museum.
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
This image is similar to the work with a similar name in the Brooklyn Museum (see above) but the subject is shown from a different viewpoint and the figures are in different positions. Height: 40.8 cm, Width: 33.7 cm[3]
Housed at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C..
The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea
Height: 40.1 cm, Width: 35.6 cm[4]
Housed at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C..
The Number of the Beast is 666
Height: 40.6 cm, Width: 33.0 cm[5]
Housed at: the Rosenbach Museum & Library
In media
The painting The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun plays a prominent role in Thomas Harris' novel Red Dragon (the book misidentifies it as The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun), its film adaptations, Manhunter and Red Dragon, and the TV series Hannibal, in which the primary antagonist Francis Dolarhyde has an obsession with the painting. Dolarhyde is fixated with the strength and power he thinks the dragon exudes, so he kills entire families to "become" the dragon. He visits the Brooklyn Museum and eats the painting. He also has a giant tattoo of the dragon on his back. The painting is also referenced as King Ghidorah in the 2019 movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
It has also been used as the Oxford World's Classics front cover of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.[6]