The Seventh Angel (Revelations: XVI)

Roderick Mead

New Mexico printmaker Roderick Mead studied with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris in the late 1930s where he was introduced to surrealism and the experimenal engraving and intaglio techniques that brought so many artists to the atelier.

This impression it a woodengraving and has a label from the Brooklyn Museum National Print Annual, 1950. Though editioned as 50, Mead's sales catalog lists an edition of 10.

The image refers to Revelations 16 in the bible which states: "And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunder and lightning; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were on the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent."