The Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar's Feast (Ms. 33, fol. 214v, from the Weltchronik)

Unknown painter, Regensburg · about 1400–1410
Getty Center, Los Angeles

A page of the Regensburg Weltchronik, about 1400–1410. The museum names the 13th-century poet Jansen Enikel for this part of the text.

Belshazzar sits crowned at a long table with his guests and plenty of food, while musicians blow long trumpets at the right. At the upper left a hand comes out of a cloud and writes on the wall.

From the text

A great feast for a thousand nobles (Daniel 5:1)

The fingers of a human hand write on the wall (Daniel 5:5)

The artist’s own

Trumpeters and courtiers of a German court

The hand coming out of a cloud

Details

The hand

A hand writes from a cloud at the corner.

Belshazzar

A crowned king with a long beard.

The table

Bread and dishes on a white cloth.

Trumpeters

Musicians blow long trumpets.

Unknown illuminator, Regensburg; text by Jansen Enikel (Austrian). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Ms. 33 (88.MP.70), fol. 214v) · Tempera colors, gold, silver paint, 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/)

The verses

Dan 5:1–6Later, King Belshazzar held a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and he drank wine with them. Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar gave orders to bring in the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king could drink from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines. Thus they brought in the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king drank from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines. As they drank the wine, they praised their gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone. At that moment the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. As the king watched the hand that was writing, his face grew pale and his thoughts so alarmed him that his hips gave way and his knees knocked together.