[The pool of Bethesda] [graphic] / engrav'd by Ravenet from Hogarth's painting in St. Bartholomews Hospital for S. Austen in Newgate Street, 1748.

[London] : Published Feby. 24th 1772 by John Boydell, engraver in Cheapside, London, [1748]

1 print : etching ; sheet 27.1 x 21 cm

laid paper.

George Steevens bequeathed this collection to William Windham (1750-1810). At Windham's death, the collection was put up for sale on 20 July 1810 and was bought in by Mrs. Windham at 292 guineas; by descent through the Windham family; Sotheby's, 17 February 1919 to Dyson Perrins for £400; Sotheby's sale including Property of the Late C.W. Dyson Perrins, Esq., 11 June 1959, lot 100 purchased by Maggs Bros. for W.S. Lewis for £1300.

The pool of Bethesda after the Hogarth painting. As described in the Gospel of St John, Chapter V, Christ is shown healing the sick beside the Pool of Bethesda, as an angel observes from above. At the center Christ reaches out to a crippled man who sits beside the Pool of Bethesda, shown here with an ulcer on his leg. Among the others looking for cures is a girl with Down's Syndrome (?), a woman with consumption or tuberculosis; a blind man with a stick; a man with jaundice (or melancholia or depression); a bearded man with gout and a distressed woman beside him with an injured breast; a child in the foreground carries a crutch. In the background, a servant of a naked woman pushes aside a mother with a sick baby. The mistress is most probably suffering from gonorrhea, as indicated by the rashes on her skin. Finally, in the foreground on the extreme right a pitiful man with an emaciated face full of pain and a hand on his swollen abdomen uses a crutch to approach the pool.

First line of caption: There was at Jerusalem a pool call'd Bethesda, frequented by a multitude of impotent folk ...

English

May 13, 2016

Etchings - England - London - 1748.