# The Revelation of St John: 15. The Angel with the Key to the Bottomless Pit [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [DÜRER, Albrecht]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Woodcut, 398 x 286 mm ## Commentary The Revelation of St John: 15. The Angel with the Key to the Bottomless Pit 1497-98 Woodcut, 398 x 286 mm Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe In this last sheet of the Apocalypse, two events are combined in one: the incarceration of Satan in the foreground \(Rev. 20:1- 3\) and Jerusalem being pointed out in the background \(Rev. 21:9-10\). While Satan is forced by an angel into a hole in the ground that is to be closed up for ever, another angel is pointing the road out to St John in a scene behind them. He is supposed to rebuild the abandoned, half ruined city that is being guarded by angels - in the context of the general expectation, in about 1500, that the last days had come, this can be interpreted as a symbol of the Holy Roman Empire. The flock of birds diving towards them is a reference to the part of the text in which the angels order the birds to gather to eat the bodies \(Rev. 19:17\). ## Related artworks - [A Young Girl of Cologne and Dürer's Wife]() - [Abduction of a Woman]() - [Abduction of Proserpine on a Unicorn]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam and Eve]() - [Adam \(detail\)]() - [Adam]() - [Adoration of the Magi \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi \(detail\)]() - [Adoration of the Magi \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()