Image Details

Estate of Leonard Baskin/From a Passover Haggadah

A roaring lion illustrates the fourth plague in American artist Leonard Baskin’s compressed illustration of the ten plagues for his 1974 A Passover Haggadah. Baskin’s ten plagues are presented out of their customary order: The second, frogs, is at upper right; the eighth, locusts, at upper left; the river of blood (plague number one) is directly beneath them. Below the river of blood, a camel lies dead of plague number five, livestock disease, and also has boils (plague number six)—and that’s hail (plague seven) falling around the carcass. Below the camel marches a column of lice (plague three). A band of darkness (plague nine) separates the lice from plague four—here again, as in Szyk’s version, interpreted as wild beasts. The silhouette at bottom is the body of the firstborn, stricken dead at midnight—the tenth and final plague.