The Virgin with a Dragon at Her Feet
The Serpent and the Dragon as the central motif, with the Angel and the Wing, and the Sun and the Moon in a secondary part. From The Flamel figures.
What is happening
Apocalypse 12:2 “And being with child, she cried travailing in birth: and was in pain to be delivered.”
Apocalypse 12:5 “And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with an iron rod. And her son was taken up to God and to his throne.”
Apocalypse 12:6 “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, that there they should feed her, a thousand two hundred sixty days.”
Key · 3 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 2
The picture
She stands on a crescent moon; the golden glory behind her is not counted as a sun. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
The Wellcome's catalogue reads this sheet as a stage of the alchemical process, and it may be one, but every element in it is drawn from a single chapter of the Bible, the twelfth of the Apocalypse, and that is where the archive reads it from. A woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, on her head a crown of twelve stars; with child, and crying out in labour; and before her a great red dragon with seven heads, waiting to devour the child. The painter of 1772, Denis Molinier, working after a set of figures that circulated under the name of Abraham the Jew and Nicolas Flamel, has painted that scene almost line by line.
She stands in a blaze of gold, which is the sun she is clothed with, on a crescent moon, with the twelve stars round her head. Her hands are folded on her breast and her belly is full: the chapter's woman is pregnant and the child is the point of the story. On the printed sheet the Virgin of the Apocalypse and the Virgin Mary had long since become one figure, and the painter has made no distinction.
At her feet the dragon is many-headed and green rather than red, and its tail runs up the left edge of the sheet pulling stars out of the sky. That is verse four: his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. Above, in a cloud at the upper left, a small figure comes down with a weapon raised. The chapter has a war in heaven a few verses on, Michael and his angels fighting the dragon, and the figure in the cloud may be that war arriving; the sheet does not name him.
Her wings are the two wings of a great eagle given to her in verse fourteen, so that she may fly into the desert away from the serpent. The painter shows her with the wings already, before the flight, standing her ground on the moon while the dragon waits. Between them, nothing moves. It is the moment before the child is born and taken up to God.
Why this scene is in a book of alchemical figures is the question the sheet does not answer by itself. The alchemists read the Apocalypse as they read everything, as a veiled account of the work, and the woman who brings forth a child under attack from a dragon reads easily as the matter in the vessel giving birth to the stone while the corrosive dragon threatens it; the Wellcome's cataloguer put it in one line, a stage in the alchemical process. The archive holds no explanation of the sheet by whoever designed it, so that reading stays a reading. What is certain is the source, and the source is given here verse by verse.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
A single creature doing two opposite jobs. Note whether it is bound, killed, or eating itself.
In plain words The dragon at her feet is the red dragon of the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, drawn with many heads, and its tail sweeps up the left side of the sheet dragging stars down out of the sky, exactly as the chapter says: his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven.
Apocalypse 12:3 “And there was seen another sign in heaven. And behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and on his heads seven diadems.”
Apocalypse 12:4 “And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to be delivered: that, when she should be delivered, he might devour her son.”
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
In plain words A crown of twelve stars on her head, a crescent moon under her feet, and a blaze of gold around her: the three things the Apocalypse gives the woman clothed with the sun. The golden glory is the sun she is clothed with, not a separate sun in the picture.
Apocalypse 12:1 “And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
The mark of an errand rather than a nature. Note whether the wings are open, folded, or given to the figure by someone else.
In plain words The wings at her shoulders come from later in the same chapter, where the woman is given two wings of a great eagle to fly from the serpent into the desert. The painter has given her the wings before the flight.
Apocalypse 12:14 “And there were given to the woman two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the desert, unto her place, where she is nourished for a time and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.”
Also carrying the Serpent and the Dragon
30 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
A Crowned Woman with a Rose-Topped Caduceus, in a Circle of Water
Rivers in the Wilderness, with Serpents and Fire
Hermes Standing upon the Back of Typhon
Saint Michael Fighting the Dragon
Hic est Draco caudam suam devorans
DRACO non moritur, nisi cum fratre & sorore sua interficiatur, qui sunt Sol & Luna
Where the detail is the subject
the Angel and the Wing · the Sun and the Moon
Each of these is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about each.
By the same hand
In the same series
Record
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