The Angels Block the Winds

Four angels stand at the ends of the earth and hold back the winds. Between them stands a fifth angel: Jesus Christ. He puts a sign on the foreheads of the true believers, so that they can later be distinguished. The winds are blocked in order to enable the process.

This is one of 117 illuminations that Matthias Gerung made around 1530 in a book now known as the Ottheinrich Bible. It is the oldest surviving manuscript of the New Testament in the German language.

It was made a hundred years earlier on behalf of Duke Ludwig VII of Bavaria, but not all the illuminations were added then. The artists who worked on it at that time in Regensburg stopped at the book of Mark.

A century later, Count Palatine Ottheinrich of Neuburg commissioned Gerung to complete the illuminations.