The Fifth Trumpet: the Locusts
Virgil Solis, 1565 · Revelation 9:1
The passage
And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.
Revelation 9:1
About this woodcut
A great tub or pit has been opened and smoke is boiling out of it with a star at its centre. Out of the smoke come the locusts, and they have human faces under crowns, insect wings and long tails. Men lie across the whole bottom of the picture, some struggling, some still.
The text says they had faces as the faces of men and crowns like gold, and that they were told not to kill but to torment. Solis follows it exactly, which is why the picture is stranger than any invention would have been. Nobody on the ground is dead. They are all still moving.
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