Revelations


Art of the Apocalypse

 

A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH
 

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

Revelation 21:1

JUST AS BABYLON FUNCTIONS AS A SYMBOLIC SITE FOR TEMPTATION AND

evil, so the New Jerusalem serves as a symbol of heaven. In the vision of the | new city revealed to John by one of the angels, it is a twelve-gated metropolis И of vast proportions—1,500 miles in length, width, and height—and constructed of the most costly materials: gold, pearls, precious stones. The descriptions of it are so detailed that they could almost be diagrammed in an architectural drawing.
Medieval and Renaissance depictions of paradise can be engagingly fanciful, as in Andrea da Firenze's pastel-tinted haven filled with flowers, forests, and solicitous angels.

The concept of heaven as a court—which has both judicial and royal connotations—long influenced depictions of the enthroned Christ and of Mary as Queen of Heaven.

Jacopo Robusti Tintoretto
(1518-1594)
Paradise
1579
Musee du Louvre, Paris