MINIATURIST, Spanish
(active around 1180)

Beatus of Liébana: Commentary on the Apocalypse

c. 1180
Manuscript (1991.232), 448 x 298 mm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Beatus of Liébana (730-800 AD) was a monk, theologian and geographer from the Kingdom of Asturias. In a monastery in the mountains of northern Spain, 700 years after the Book of Revelations was written, he set down to illustrate a collection of writings he had compiled about this most vivid and apocalyptic of the New Testament books. Throughout the next few centuries his depictions of multi-headed beasts, decapitated sinners, and trumpet blowing angels, would be copied over and over again in various versions of the manuscript.

The miniature shows a leaf from a copy of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana. The miniature depicts the Locusts Come upon the Earth.

The manuscript was produced in the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, Burgos.