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In the 1820s Martin produced a series of paintings depicting scenes of disaster, set in infinite, visionary spaces and full of theatrical, nightmarish lighting effects. Their basic mood largely derived from the artist's familiarity with John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost and with the biblical Apocalypse.
The Pandemonium of 1841 goes back to a passage in the first book of Milton's Paradise Lost, in which "Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises suddenly built out of the deep." In a diagonal perspective characteristic of Martin, a gigantic building complex extends along the waterfront. This recalls fantastic reconstructions of cities of antiquity. Martin's Satan, whose invocatory figure stands on a rocky outcrop in the right foreground, has the look of an ancient Greek hero. Like Achilles outside Troy, he appears with shield and feathered helmet, but commanding an army not of besiegers but of demons and damned souls in their Cyclopean city.
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