Gerona Beatus

[Notes 4][2][4] The manuscript is described as containing: ... a heavily ornamental spirit, a strong tendency to the two-dimensional, a stylized approach to concrete reality which had an almost surreal air, and an unbroken luminous quality to the paint, all of them qualities we can find in a similar fashion in numerous other Mozarabic Beatus manuscripts too... certain details, such as the robes worn by a horseman or the bridle of a horse, still betray Islamic features.

[5] Several of the manuscript's images indicate an extensive knowledge of Islamic iconography, despite the general style reflecting artistic developments in northern Europe.

The meaning of the rider is part of a larger debate, taking place since the early 1990s, over the purpose behind Beatus's compilations and their popularity throughout Christian Spain in the succeeding centuries.

[Notes 7] In that context [of the Christian stand-off with Islam], his commentary on the apocalyptic visions of John the Divine took on the nature of a political book, since its contents... could be applied directly to the contemporary struggles against those who were perceived as the heathen.

[Notes 10][14] Klein quotes Maius, the artist of the Morgan Beatus, who had written in the colophon that he painted the pictures so the learned may fear the coming of the future judgement and of the world’s end.