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For artists, throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era, giving pictorial form to the extraordinary visions in the Revelations of St John posed a unique challenge. English book illumination of the 13th century, in the Romanesque era, accomplished a major achievement in this genre of illustration. The Lambeth Apocalypse is written in a script of exquisite calligraphy, decorated with initials coloured economically in red and blue or gold and with delicate ornamental margins The 78 half-page painted and gilded illustrations follow the text of the Revelation closely, translating into visual terms the apocalyptic visions of the biblical seer.
The half-page coloured and gilded miniatures positioned in rectangular frames above the text image forth the apocalyptic visions of John the Divine's Revelation with an extraordinary fidelity to the exact word. On folio 5v, we see the visionary himself at the left, and an apocalyptic creature in the form of a winged bull manifesting further revelations to him. One of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, mantled in the habit of a capuchin friar, is riding off to the right.
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