He sits on the tomb and points.
Bible in art · Matthew
The Angel at the Empty Tomb of Christ (Ms. 125, fol. 118, from the Irmengard Codex)
Unknown German painter · shortly after 1053
Getty Center, Los Angeles
From the Irmengard Codex, painted in Germany shortly after 1053. The painters worked in tempera and gold on parchment, in the strong colours of the Reichenau style.
A winged angel in pale robes sits on the empty tomb and points. Above, two guards have fallen asleep on the roof of the tomb-house, their spears beside them.
From the text
- An angel rolls away the stone and sits on it (Matthew 28:2)
- The guards become like dead men (Matthew 28:4)
The artist’s own
- The tomb as a stone chest under a roofed shrine
- The guards asleep on the roof
Details
The angel
Guard
A soldier sleeps on the roof.
Guard
Another lies with his spear.
The tomb
An empty stone chest.
Unknown illuminator, German (Reichenau). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Ms. 125 (2023.6), fol. 118) · Tempera colors, gold, and ink · Images provided here are believed to be in the public domain and are available under CC0 through Getty’s Open Content Program. (Getty record: "No Copyright", http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)