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Daniel's Vision of the Son of Man
1462
Woodcut in Die Vier Historien
MS. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Réserve des livres rares, A-1646 (2), 27r
In a vision in Daniel 7 the "Ancient of Days" destroys the power of four terrible beasts, whereupon
…one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and he came even to the Ancient of days: and they presented him before him. And he gave him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes and tongues shall serve him: his power is an everlasting power that shall not be taken away: and his kingdom that shall not be destroyed" (7:13b-14).
Christian commentators considered this passage a prophecy of Christ's second coming on the Day of Judgment,1 and accordingly the artist gives the figure in the cartouche a crossed halo and expresses his "everlasting power" by means of the mappa mundi orb beneath his feet. The rainbow and the sword and sheaf behind the figure's head are conventional in Second Coming images (for example the one in the Biblia Pauperum in Strauss, LXXX, 61). The rainbow may be a reference to Revelation 4:3, "And he that sat [i.e., God], was to the sight like the jasper and the sardine stone; and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald." The rainbow also appears in the "Son of Man" window in the Sainte Chapelle, which this woodcut resembles:
Read more about images of Daniel.
Read more about images drawn from Revelation.
Sources: The woodcut is from this page at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (See this page for the BnF's download policy.)
The stained glass is from this page at Wikimedia Commons.
