Image Details

Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, MD, MS. 152, Fol. 14V

Amos The Shepherd decorates a page from the Book of Amos in the Conradin Bible, an exquisite example of medieval Italian illumination.

Amos was born in Tekoa, south of Bethlehem, in the eighth century B.C.; he tells us that he was primarily a herdsman, not a prophet, when he was taken from his work to prophesy concerning Israel (Am 7:14–15). Although most scholars view Amos’s four visions in chapters 7 and 8 as messages of doom, author H. Neil Richardson reads in them some hope because God listens to the prophet and offers forgiveness.

Its pages cut up and dispersed for hundreds of years, the Conradin Bible now resides—almost intact—in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland.