The Escorial Beatus is an illustrated manuscript from the tenth century, created by the monk Beatus of Liebana. El Escorial is a village 26 miles northwest of Madrid, Spain, in the Guadarrama mountains.
From what I can determine, Beatus of Liebana was one of the group of Christians who still lived on the Iberian Peninsula after the Arab invasion of 711. The Christians were tolerated, but their art and architecture and cultural artifacts have become known as Mozarabic (from musta’rib, or “arabicized”). It’s his commentary on the Apocalypse, and the illustrations are so exquisitely lovely (and slightly bizarre) that I thought I would just post some of them here. (I wonder if Picasso knew of these–I think he must have.)
