The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is one of Blake's most iconic works. Due to its provocative nature and its subtle theory on oppositions as an essential part of life, it has inspired poets, thinkers and artists.

Virtually forgotten in his time (but admired by creators such as Flaxman or Füsli), William Blake disconcerted generations of scholars who could not see in him more than an eccentric lost in the world of the unconscious. It will not be until well into the twentieth century that some scholars offer a new view of Blake. Although as an artist and as a man he was profoundly original, he was by no means a hallucinated alien to the surrounding reality; quite the contrary, he was a lucid critic of his time who pointed out many of his sinister traits. His ideological position was always clear and with his symbolic art he accused scourges such as slavery or the ruthless exploitation of the industrial revolution.

Blake felt from childhood a decided inclination for poetry and the plastic arts, which for him always formed a unit. His father kept him from school and sent him to draw with Henry Pars. Later, he learned the engraver's trade with James Basire and in 1788 he began to work in etching. Blake had a great culture, although self-taught, his knowledge and interests were vast, he also had the gift of languages as he was fluent in Greek, Latin and some Hebrew. The knowledge of his cultural, political and religious concerns, as well as his family and social environment, shed light on his art.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was written in years of unprecedented tension caused by the French Revolution. Blake used a language inspired by the Bible that combines verse, prose and aphorism and illustrated it with etchings of a rank comparable to the text, expressing in the work all the inner storm that accompanied the birth of the contemporary era.