Gallery

“When John heard a voice from heaven,” reads the Latin phrase in this tenth-century illustration from a commentary on the Book of Revelation. Compiled by the Spanish monk Beatus of Liebana (d. 798 A.D.), this commentary was one of the most frequently copied and illuminated manuscripts during the 10th and 11th centuries—an era when many Christians were caught up in a millennial fervor not unlike the one that surrounded the recent advent of the year 2000. In this detail, the cloud-draped hand of God reaches out to John, the visionary author of Revelation, from a brightly colored disk that […]