According to Susan Sink, author of The Art of the Saint John’s Bible, Donald Jackson wrote and illuminated the book of Revelation with no assistance. He began by laying down color backgrounds, working on all of the Revelation illuminations at once, with the intention of “turning up the volume full blast” and using all the colors of the rainbow. (vol. 3, p. 103)
As usual within the Saint John’s Bible, the artist includes elements from previous illuminations. Note the gold squares above the book title, recalling those in the Creation and Fulfillment of Creation images. The large image on the right-hand page recalls the prophecy of the Son of Man in the book of Daniel, and the lampstands from Isaiah’s vision of God seated on a throne.
Except for the seraph wings in the Ecclesiastes frontispiece, we have not yet seen stamps used to great effect, but in the bottom half of the large right-hand image Donald Jackson re-uses several that we will see in future posts. The stamp with concentric circles is based on a piece of cloth from India that was embroidered and appliquéd with mirrors; it appears frequently in the Wisdom Books volume. The fish surrounding that stamp were used most notably in an illumination for the Loaves and Fishes story in the book of Mark.