Gospel Book

Ghoukas; Mik'ayel

1583

Tempera colors and ink, Tempera Colors, Ink

J. Paul Getty Museum

This is an illustration from a Gospel Book depicting figures with wings and halos, some holding swords, and others being led up a ramp. A large serpent-like creature is at the bottom. The paintings in this sixteenth-century Armenian Gospel book interweave figures, fabrics, and settings into a rhythmic patterning that spreads energetically across the pages. In the manuscript’s many full-page images, the artist, named Ghoukas, employed a system of visual symbolism in which perspective and proportion are swept away. Characters gesture expressively at one another, their interactions cutting clearly through the images’ inventive mix of proportions and perspectives. The figures appear at once fragmented and eternal, subsumed by the fluid modeling of their pink, yellow, and green draperies. The manuscript is richly illu