Abstract This article explores William Blake’s engagement with the Belvedere Torso, a Hellenistic fragment he sketched during his student years at the Royal Academy (1779–80). In 1809, Blake declared the Torso to be ‘the only original work remaining’, claiming that all other Classical sculptures were merely ‘copies’ of more ancient originals. This essay examines why Blake isolates the Torso from other canonical statues and situates this claim alongside his reading of Winckelmann and Hogarth, and within a broader Romantic fascination with the fragment. Analysing the narrative significance of the Torso across four of Blake’s visual works — The Stoning of Achan (1800), The Death Chamber drawings (1800–07), and Jerusalem, plate 25 (1820) — this paper argues that Blake adopted the fragment as an imaginative archetype of heroic suffering. Rather than viewing the fragment as a symbol of decay, Blake instead used it as a site of visionary potential: both in his writings and his visual work. In doing so, Blake transforms Classical reception into a mode of imaginative renewal, and rather than proving his isolated genius, the essay demonstrates his deep embeddedness within the visual and intellectual culture of his time.
Rebecca Marks (Thu,) studied this question.