John Martin, born in 1789, was a British painter famous for enormous apocalyptic landscapes such as Belshazzar's Feast (1820), which used theatrical sets, trick perspective and monumental architecture. He was often dismissed as a religious fanatic or a mere artisan, but his work carried radical sympathies and seems to attack the powerful. His paintings were placed to make viewers look up at tyrannical towers, as if the spectator were part of the uprising. Martin also planned practical projects for London, including a new sewage system and an underground railway. His scale and staging are often compared to Hollywood sets, a sign of how far his theatre of the sublime reached. Critics of the time struggled to categorise him.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.