The recent acquisition of John Flaxman's Angels Guiding a Soul to Heaven provides the occasion to exhibit this unusually large and mystical work together with a small selection from the museum's collection of more than seventy drawings by the artist. His name synonymous with Neoclassicism, Flaxman was the first British sculptor to achieve a major international reputation, primarily through his designs for Wedgwood pottery, and his influential illustrations of literary works by Homer, Aeschylus, Hesiod, and Dante. Angels Guiding a Soul to Heaven is one of several drawings by Flaxman that were inspired by the ideas of the Swedish scientist, philosopher, and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Essential to Swedenborg's writings is the belief that all spiritual beings keep their human form after death,hence Flaxman's depiction of wingless angels in this drawing, which probably dates to his Italian sojourn of 1787-94.