Miniature from a Manuscript of the Apocalypse: The War in Heaven (c. 1295): Art, History and Details

Miniature from a Manuscript of the Apocalypse: The War in Heaven (c. 1295) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The visionary text of St. John the Evangelist's Apocalypse, the final book of the New Testament, inspired these images of salvation, sin, and divine retribution. A large number of illustrated volumes of the Apocalypse appeared in Northern Europe, especially in England, after the year 1240--perhaps reflecting a fear of the world's end. These miniatures come from a manuscript produced in Lorraine, then artistically influenced by English models.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature from a Manuscript of the Apocalypse: The War in Heaven
• Date: c. 1295
• Culture: France, Lorraine
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 12 x 14.2 cm (4 3/4 x 5 9/16 in.); Framed: 52.4 x 39.7 cm (20 5/8 x 15 5/8 in.); Matted: 48.9 x 36.2 cm (19 1/4 x 14 1/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Manuscript Illuminations
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1983.73.2.b

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Holger A. Klein. Sacred Gifts and Worldly Treasures: Medieval Masterworks from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.