. English: Image of a mounted figure, in Islamic dress, spearing a snake, from the Gerona Beatus. Folio 134v The rider defeating the snake The image, which is apparently totally unrelated to the storia and the explanatio, covers two thirds of the folio. Depicted on the right-hand side is a man upon his mount wearing a turban with ribbons flying in the wind, spearing the jaws of the large snake he is fighting. This figure is similar to the one seen earlier of Herod on horseback (f. 15v), but with more obviously Islamic elements: the cloth tied around his head waving behind him appears in Sassan
. English: Image of a mounted figure, in Islamic dress, spearing a snake, from the Gerona Beatus. Folio 134v The rider defeating the snake The image, which is apparently totally unrelated to the storia and the explanatio, covers two thirds of the folio. Depicted on the right-hand side is a man upon his mount wearing a turban with ribbons flying in the wind, spearing the jaws of the large snake he is fighting. This figure is similar to the one seen earlier of Herod on horseback (f. 15v), but with more obviously Islamic elements: the cloth tied around his head waving behind him appears in Sassanian representations of governors on horseback. The simple tack shown in the Gerona Beatus is however closer to that of a horseman on a sixth-century Coptic fabric: a similarity increased by the fact that the horseman bears a spear rather than a bow, a typical Sassanian weapon. The use of stirrups also situates the rider in the Gerona Beatus after the Sassanian period. Although no riders killing snakes with their spears have survived in the iconography of Andalusia, there are models of horsemen spearing lions. D. Shepherd classified such topics within the iconography of the heavenly hunter symbolising Paradise. circa 975. Ende & Emetrius, Tabara Monastery 676 Islamic rider Gironaa
Size: 2205px × 2266px
Photo credit: © The Picture Art Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: &, ., /, /., 975., circa, emetrius, ende, monastery., tabara
