Miniature from a Manuscript of the Apocalypse: The Woman upon the Scarlet Beast and The Fall of Babylon (c. 1295): Art, History and Details

Miniature from a Manuscript of the Apocalypse: The Woman upon the Scarlet Beast and The Fall of Babylon (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 Saint 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.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature from a Manuscript of the Apocalypse: The Woman upon the Scarlet Beast and The Fall of Babylon
• Date: c. 1295
• Culture: France, Lorraine
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: ink, tempera, and gold on vellum
• Dimensions: Sheet: 10.2 x 14.7 cm (4 x 5 13/16 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: 1983.73.1

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Freyham, R. "Joachism and the English Apocalypse," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XVIII (1955).
• De Winter, Patrick M. “Visions of the Apocalypse in Medieval England and France.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 10 (1983).
• Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co. Single Leaves and Miniatures from Western Illuminated Manuscripts. 1983.

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.