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The truly superb quality and excellent condition of the illuminations in this Apocalypse allow the reader to enjoy its fascinating images in all their glory. The lavish colours and abundant use of burnished gold make the decoration in this codex a marvellous example of late thirteenth-century English illumination.
The miniatures illustrate both the Apocalypse text and the glosses. The images are set inside rectangular frames decorated with a great variety of shapes and colours. The work is characterised by the use of decorated gold, the predominance of blue and reddish-brown hues, and the repeated use of certain filigrees (squares, different geometrical shapes and gold circles surrounded by white dots).
In both the glosses and the Apocalypse, the Antichrist takes different forms: magician, false preacher, sovereign and soldier. Jessie Poesch describes him in a memorable phrase as "a strange, diabolic and chameleonic figure" whose sinister presence permeates all spheres of human activity.
Although it is not certain, this codex probably belonged to Pope Clement IX (1667-1669). The manuscript was acquired in the latter half of the 19th century by Cesare Battaglini de Rimini thanks to his wife, a descendant of Clement IX. It belonged to Henry Yates Thomson from 1899 to 1920, when it was bought by Calouste Gulbenkian. It is currently part of the Gulbenkian Foundation Museum collection in Lisbon.
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