Heaven & Hell Artwork

I received this email awhile back from Sabbath fan Eric Goldberg, and it’s sat in the dark recesses of my inbox for ages. In going through email tonight, I saw it, and thought I’d bring it up now. Thanks Eric, and sorry for the delay.

I’m not sure if you know or are interested, but the image of the Angels fighting on the front of the “Angel War” Heaven and Hell shirt that says on the back “The closer you get to the meaning, the sooner you’ll know that you’re dreaming” is taken from a famous image from an illustration of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” by Gustave Dore, a French artist who lived in the middle of the 19th century. (As a side note, Dore lived a little over 200 years after Milton, and is famous for also illustrating Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and Poe’s “The Raven”.)

The H&H shirt is pretty close to the original (much closer in fact than Sabbath’s “Eternal Idol” cover was to Rodin’s sculpture). See below for a comparison:

In case you are interested, you can see more of Dore’s images on the web if you Google him, but here are a few sites you may find interesting: