An angel in red flies down with a sword.
Bible in art · 2 Samuel
David Praying That the Israelites Be Spared from a Plague (Ms. Ludwig IX 9, fol. 74v, from the Book of Hours)
Unknown Flemish painter · after 1460
Getty Center, Los Angeles
A book of hours made in Flanders, possibly Brabant, after 1460. Pictures of King David often opened the penitential psalms in such books.
David kneels in a pink, fur-lined robe; his crown and sceptre lie on the grass. An angel flies down with a sword, God looks on from the clouds, and people lie dead across the hillside.
From the text
- David sees the angel striking the people (2 Samuel 24:17)
- The angel with a drawn sword between heaven and earth (1 Chronicles 21:16)
The artist’s own
- The crown and sceptre laid on the ground
- God shown above holding an orb
Details
The angel
Above
A crowned old man in the clouds holds an orb.
The dead
Bodies lie heaped on the hillside.
David
He kneels, his crown and sceptre beside him.
Unknown illuminator, Flemish. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (Ms. Ludwig IX 9 (83.ML.105), fol. 74v) · Tempera colors, gold leaf, 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/)