![]() They are now visible because the paint used to cover them up has become more transparent over time. There are haphazard brushstrokes in the sky, on the upper right: Velázquez had a habit of wiping excess paint from his brush in the background. ![]() The background is dark but you can just make out a sea and mountains in the distance. Saint John’s angular face is unusually youthful – he is traditionally depicted in paintings as a grey-bearded old man. This painting is paired with The Immaculate Conception, which shows the Virgin standing on a moon and surrounded by stars, like in the vision we see here.Īs in all of Velázquez’s early works, the figures he paints in his religious scenes appear to be based on real people. ![]() The Virgin as Woman of the Apocalypse is linked to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the belief that Mary was herself conceived without sin. This woman is often understood to be the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. The eagle is one of Saint John’s attributes and one sits beside him. She is given ‘two wings of a great eagle’, faintly visible behind her, to help her escape. He sits with an oversized book in his lap, his quill pen poised, and looks towards the tiny illuminated female figure hovering in the clouds above him.Īlongside her we can see a dragon – the devil – ready, as Saint John writes, ‘to devour her child’ as soon as it is born. On the Greek island of Patmos Saint John the Evangelist is having a vision, which he records in writing: he sees the Woman of the Apocalypse (Revelation 12: 1–4 and 14).
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