Odilon Redon — And He Had in His Right Hand Seven Stars (1899)

A lithograph from Redon's Apocalypse of Saint John, a suite of twelve plates published by Ambroise Vollard in 1899 in an edition of one hundred.

The title is the verse itself, Revelation 1:16, describing John's opening vision on Patmos. Redon renders it without narrative or setting: a veiled figure rises out of a dense, worked black, the face lit from within, the eyes fixed on the viewer. The blade issues straight from the mouth and runs the full height of the sheet, making the sword the vertical axis of the whole image. The seven stars are not gathered in a fist but scattered small and faint at lower left, like embers fallen into the dark.

This was Redon's last great lithographic cycle, and among the finest examples of what he called his noirs — the black-and-white works in which he found, as he put it, the most essential colour.

• Artist: Odilon Redon (1840–1916)
• Date: 1899
• Original: lithograph, from L'Apocalypse de saint Jean, published by Ambroise Vollard
• Museum-quality reproduction on fine art paper

Part of our collection of visions and the fantastic — see also our digital art book Knight, Death and the Devil.