The Harvest of the World

Even more in the four minor panels of the Polyptych of the Apocalypse the transcendental significance of the gold background pales before the freshness and inventiveness of Jacobello Alberegno’s imagination. As with the other scenes, so with the ‘Harvest of the World’, the text of the Book of the Apocalypse (XIII, vv. 17-18) is closely followed: ‘And another angel came out of the temple… and he too had a sharpened sickle. And another angel came out from the altar… saying: wield your sharpened sickle and harvest the grapes of the world, for the fruit is now ripe’. The detailed and penetrating transcription of the sacred text into pictorial form seems to be softened by the enchanting addition of an arbour of black grapes with bunches of the fruit hanging heavy with juice and leaves which are already showing signs that Autumn is drawing to a close.