Images of Heaven (Paradise)
Some early images of Heaven relied on imagery from the Book of Revelation, as in the apse at St. Praxedes:
Forearch of the apse at St. Praxedes, Rome.
(See the description page for a larger image with commentary.)
In the Renaissance, representations of Heaven were an opportunity to portray a multiplicity of well-known saints, as Saraceni's Paradise (1598) at the top of this page and Jacopo Bassano's painting of the same name from 1578-80. Both those paintings put an adaptation of the Deësis at the high point of the composition.

This way of picturing Heaven can be adapted to other iconographic types. Thus Zanchi's Coronation of the Virgin (after 1680) sets the event in a Heaven of angels and saints, some of them specific persons. Similarly, in Ar­mi­nio Zuc­ca­to's Glory of the Saints (1570) only God the Father is placed higher than the Madonna and Child. A portrait of St. Michael the Archangel with his scales and military garb is set against a Heaven of this type in an 18th-century painting in Mission San Miguel, California (Neuerburg, 3).

Prepared in 2021 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University.


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