Some early images of Heaven relied on imagery from the Book of Revelation, as in the apse at St. Praxedes:
![]() (See the description page for a larger image with commentary.) This way of picturing Heaven can be adapted to other iconographic types. Thus Zanchi's Coronation of the Virgin (after 1680) sets the event in a Heaven of angels and saints, some of them specific persons. Similarly, in Arminio Zuccato's Glory of the Saints (1570) only God the Father is placed higher than the Madonna and Child. A portrait of St. Michael the Archangel with his scales and military garb is set against a Heaven of this type in an 18th-century painting in Mission San Miguel, California (Neuerburg, 3).
Prepared in 2021 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University.
|