Cloisters Apocalypse

Cloisters Apocalypse
New York, Cloisters Apocalypse, MS 68.174
Medieval manuscript leaf bearing 2 short columns of script in brown ink. Above them, a miniature in colours & gold showing a barren landscape with a small hillock at centre. Pages of script litter the hillock. At left sits a saint, holding a book. Clad in purple, green, & pink robes, he is nimbed with a golden halo. Before him stand a group of nude men, reading pages from the hillock. At right, another group of nude men turn away from the written word. They stand in an inferno with a devil lurking below. Above all this hangs a golden mandorla. Jesus sits within it, enthroned & crowned, holding up an open book.
Cloisters Apocalypse, f. 35v: The Last Judgment
TypeApocalypse
Datec. 1330
Place of originNormandy
Language(s)Latin
MaterialParchment, ink, tempera, gold, silver[1]
Size308 × 230 mm
Format2 columns
Illumination(s)72 half or full-page miniatures. Coats of arms. Decorated initials in red & blue.
Previously keptSwitzerland, possibly Abbey of Zofingen[2]: 59 
Accessionno. 68.174

The Cloisters Apocalypse, MS 68.174 is a French illuminated manuscript dated c. 1330. The text is the Book of Revelation, thought in the Middle Ages to be by John the Evangelist, part of the New Testament, containing visions and apocalyptic revelation. According to Christian legend John was exiled c. 95 CE to the Aegean island of Patmos, where he wrote . The book evokes John's despair and isolation while exiled,[3]: 45  and his prophecy of events and terrors of the last days. Today the book is in The Cloisters in New York.

It has been claimed that the manuscript was probably influenced by the Commentary on the Apocalypse (c. 776) by the Spanish abbot Beatus of Liébana, who collected earlier commentators on Revelation for an early medieval context,[4]: 39  when the end of the world was anticipated. But unlike the Morgan Beatus, also in New York, it is not one of the group of Iberian Beatus manuscripts with very distinctive illustrations, apparently dating back to the 8th-century creation of the work.

There are 40 folios, that is to say, 80 pages.[5] The page size is 12 1/8 × 9 1/16 in. (30.8 × 23 cm).

  1. ^ "The Cloisters Apocalypse ca.1330". The MET. Retrieved 11 Feb 2022.
  2. ^ Lawson, Margaret; Wixom, William D. (2002). "Picturing the Apocalypse: Illustrated Leaves from a Medieval Spanish Manuscript". Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 59 (3): 1+3–56. doi:10.2307/3269148. JSTOR 3269148.
  3. ^ "The Cloisters Apocalypse". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 30 (2). 1971.
  4. ^ Barnet, Peter; Wu, Nancy (2005). The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-1-5883-9176-6.
  5. ^ Deuchler & Hoffeld, 97-102