Skip to content
Medieval Art
All artworks
Period
Romanesque
Date
ca. 1180
Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Object no.
466204

Leaf from a Beatus Manuscript: the Fourth Angel Sounds the Trumpet and an Eagle Cries Woe

Unknown Spanish illuminator, ca. 1180

Manuscript page with an angel blowing a trumpet beneath darkened sun, moon and stars, and a large eagle in flight against banded colour

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Purchase, The Cloisters Collection, Rogers and Harris Brisbane Dick Funds, and Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1991 · Public domain

The record

Maker
Unknown Spanish illuminator
Date
ca. 1180
Medium
Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment
Dimensions
44.4 × 30 cm (folio)
Period
Romanesque

Why it matters

Illustrated copies of the Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Liébana, an eighth-century Asturian monk, were made in Spain over several centuries. This leaf, from a manuscript disassembled in the 1870s, shows the fourth angel sounding a trumpet as the sun, moon and stars darken, and an eagle crying woe to the earth. The flat bands of colour and bold outlines belong to a tradition that developed alongside, and in contact with, the arts of Islamic Iberia.

The Met collection record