The Woman and the Dragon
Virgil Solis, 1565 · Revelation 12:1
The passage
And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
Revelation 12:1
About this woodcut
A woman stands on the left crowned with stars, the moon under her feet, and an angel is lifting her child up into the cloud. On the right a winged figure drives a spear down into a dragon with seven crowned heads, and the dragon fills the lower half of the frame with coils and jaws.
The child is already gone before the fight starts. Solis stages it left to right so you read it in order: the woman, the rescue, then the war, which is the sequence Revelation 12 gives. The dragon heads are drawn individually, each with its own expression, and one of them is still looking back at the woman.
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