Imagine standing before this painting just after it was completed, in England in 1828. What do you see?
The rending skies and crumbling city make clear that the time for earthly things is over and God’s judgement is at hand. It is not long before that fateful seventh seal will be broken. The violence of this large painting—8 ft. (2.5 m) across—rips us away from our own earthly concerns towards thoughts of a higher order.
These thoughts are at first diffuse, but sharpen as we turn from the cataclysm itself to the people huddled before it, penitent and quaking—except for one odd soul raising his arms triumphantly. What’s that about? Then we see his broken shackles and are overcome: this slave rejoices, though the world’s end is at hand, because he is finally free.
This moment is so forceful because we identify with the slave. He faces the same way we do, sees what we see. We are surrounded by the cataclysm, just as he is. As a result, slavery’s oppressiveness hits home in a way words never could.
Then we turn back to the crouching masses around the slave and remember that judgement is coming—and while we are free, others are not. Slavery is still legal. Now the question is unavoidable: where do we stand? There was a little time yet to get on the right side of history: slavery was eliminated six years later, freeing 800,000 people throughout the British Empire.
Aesthetically, this painting lacks Picasso’s style, Gauguin’s color sense, Caravaggio’s craftiness, Da Vinci’s gracefulness. But we must also judge art by its sense of purpose. No other painting advocates for justice so vigorously, so deftly, so viscerally. By that standard, it’s a masterpiece.