February 14, 2014
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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55 In Whitney's Emblems, Chaos is represented by a confusion of lines and shapes crossing each other, in the center of which are the Greek letters which spell out the word,
56 but here art is abandoned in favor of a labeled cartoon. In the Last Judgment diptych by Van Eyck, the skeletal specter of Death has its bat wings labeled Chaos Magnum and also Umbra Mortis, for even Van Eyck could present Chaos only by personification. Lorenzo Lotto executed a curious allegory entitled Magnum Chaos in intarsia for Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo, but again we are involved only in allegory.
57 But Milton's description of Chaos remains unique; nowhere is his exploitation of the literary mode more complete than here, and nowhere are we further removed from any direct relevance to the art tradition. Yet, although he virtually abandons the visual, he continues to employ a powerfully sensuous imagery as he describes how
eagerly the fiend
O'er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
