FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 69
The Souls on Jacob's Ladder Take Their Flight 5
A single giant butterfly glowing purple out of a field of black, printed from copper plates that took over an hour each to ink, is Damien Hirst's most solemn answer to the question he kept asking: what does a soul look like when it leaves?
- Year
- 2007
- Maker
- Damien Hirst
- By price in art
- 71 of 100
- Artist
- Damien Hirst (born 1965)
- Made
- 2007
- Series
- The Souls on Jacob's Ladder Take Their Flight, six etchings; this is no. 5
- Image
- One large butterfly in glowing shades of purple against a black ground
- Medium
- Photogravure and aquatint etching in colors on Arches paper
- Size
- Sheet 119.5 x 108 cm (47 1/16 x 42 1/2 in)
- Edition
- 72, plus 18 artist's proofs; signed on the front, numbered on the back
- Publisher
- The Paragon Press, London
Six butterflies in the dark
In 2007 Hirst made a suite of six large etchings, each built around a single butterfly. In every print the composition is the same: a brightly colored butterfly, enormously enlarged, centered on a somber black background. Only the butterfly changes, from canary yellow to electric blue. In number 5, the wings glow in shades of purple.
The series broke with Hirst's usual way of using butterflies. In his paintings he scattered real butterflies across bright monochrome grounds. Here there is just one, made gigantic and set against darkness. The publisher notes that, despite appearances, the colors were chosen entirely by the artist rather than copied from nature.
How the plates were made
The prints started with transparencies of real butterfly specimens, which were scanned and scaled digitally to make gravure plates. Photogravure is an intaglio technique that uses photography rather than hand drawing to put the image on a copper plate; the plates are exposed to film and etched in acid.
A single gravure plate could not give the depth of color Hirst wanted, so each print combines a gravure plate inked in black with color and black aquatint plates. According to the publisher, the plates were so large that it took over an hour to ink one and another half hour to print it. Working together, two printers could produce five to seven butterflies a day.
The edition was 72 of each image, plus 18 artist's proofs. Hirst signed each sheet in pencil at lower right on the front, and each is numbered in pencil on the back. The image itself measures about 93 by 85 cm on a sheet about 119.5 by 108 cm.
The title and the year
The title comes from the Book of Genesis, where Jacob dreams of a ladder between earth and heaven with angels going up and down it. Hirst turns the angels into souls taking flight, a phrase that can mean ascending to heaven or simply escaping.
Butterflies had been central to Hirst's work since his 1991 installation In and Out of Love, in which live butterflies hatched from pupae fixed to canvases. He has said he loves butterflies because, even when dead, they look alive. In 2007, the year of this suite, he also made For the Love of God, a platinum cast of a human skull set with 8,601 diamonds, his most famous meditation on death.
Getting the right butterfly
This entry is the 2007 etching. It should not be confused with The Souls, a separate 2010 series of 80 foil block prints, each a single butterfly in a different color combination; the FLOAT record's description of this item as a foil block print in an edition of 15 per colorway matches that later series, not this etching. Market trackers give number 5 as an intaglio print, 120 by 108 cm, in an edition of 72.
Hirst also made unique variants of the Souls on Jacob's Ladder image in 2008-09, each annotated 'U.P.' One such unique proof sold in London for £21,590. Those are separate objects from the numbered edition.
A numbered impression of number 5 should show the purple butterfly on black, a pencil signature on the front, and a pencil number out of 72 on the back, on a sheet roughly 119.5 by 108 cm.
In the market
Number 5 comes to auction less often than its edition size suggests. One market tracker counts three auction sales since the first in June 2011, the most recent in October 2024, with hammer prices of about £13,870 to £14,474.
Across the six-print suite, results vary widely by image. Number 1 brought a hammer price of £24,000 in October 2025, while number 3 brought £13,000 in October 2024.
The numbers
- Medium
- Photogravure with color and black aquatint, on Arches paper
- Dimensions
- Sheet 119.5 x 108 cm (47 1/16 x 42 1/2 in); image about 92.7 x 85.1 cm
- Edition
- 72, plus 18 artist's proofs
- Series
- Six etchings, 2007; this is number 5 (purple butterfly)
- Publisher
- The Paragon Press, London
- Current collection
- Edition; impressions are in private hands
Timeline
Damien Hirst is born in Bristol, England.
Hirst shows In and Out of Love, with live butterflies hatching from canvases.
Hirst makes For the Love of God, a platinum skull set with 8,601 diamonds.
The Paragon Press publishes The Souls on Jacob's Ladder Take Their Flight, six etchings in editions of 72, including number 5 with a purple butterfly.
Hirst begins a set of unique variant proofs of the image, annotated 'U.P.', completed in 2009.
Number 5 makes its first recorded auction appearance, by one market tracker's count.
Hirst publishes The Souls, a separate series of 80 foil block butterfly prints often confused with this suite.
Number 5 sells at auction for a hammer price of about £13,870; number 3 sells for £13,000 the same month.
Number 1 of the suite brings a hammer price of £24,000.
The world in 2007
Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union.
Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone. It goes on sale June 29.
Nicolas Sarkozy is elected president of France.
Gordon Brown succeeds Tony Blair as British prime minister.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book in the series, is published.
A French bank blocks withdrawals from three hedge funds as the subprime mortgage crisis deepens.
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi.
Price record
A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.
By reference price, The Souls on Jacob's Ladder Take Their Flight 5 is number 71 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (69 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- Each plate took more than an hour to ink and another half hour to print, so two printers could finish only five to seven butterflies a day.
- The butterflies were scanned from real specimens, but the colors were chosen by Hirst.
- The title comes from Jacob's dream in the Book of Genesis of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven.
- Hirst made this suite the same year as For the Love of God, his diamond-covered platinum skull.
- Hirst has said he loves butterflies because, even dead, they look alive.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 3, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026