Angel of the Revelation (Book of Revelation, chapter 10)

William Blake

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This work comes from a series of eighty biblical watercolors that Blake made for Thomas Butts, an important patron. It depicts John, the author of the Book of Revelation, and his vision from the first line of chapter 10. The diminutive author, pen in hand, on the island of Patmos and gazes at a "mighty angel . . . clothed with a cloud . . . a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire." The artist based the angel's water-spanning stance on prints of the ancient Colossus of Rhodes and envisioned the seven thunders described in the text as horsemen riding through clouds.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art