Spider, Web, Snake and Flowers (for "The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil")

Henry Weston Keen British
 Related author John Webster British
 Related publisher John Lane, The Bodley Head British

Not on view

Keen was a designer of book illustrations in the Symbolist tradition. In this large drawing, a snake with intricate scales winds luxuriantly around fantastic blooms, turning to face a spider at the center of the web. This macabre but elegant image was engraved and printed as the endpaper for an edition of dramatist John Webster’s tragedy The White Devil and the Duchess of Malfi, published by the Bodley Head firm in London in 1930.

Spider, Web, Snake and Flowers (for "The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil"), Henry Weston Keen (British, 1899–1935 Walberswick, Suffolk), Pen and black ink

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.