AN APOCALYPTIC VISION
This energetic drawing represents a plan for a processional float. Surrounded by clouds and flanked by an eagle, St. John the Evangelist ascends from an ornate basin to confront his vision of the Apocalyptic Virgin: clothed by the sun, standing on the moon, and crushing a multiheaded dragon. While in Rome, Herrera would have encountered Gianlorenzo Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa, whose Baroque dynamism may have inspired this design for an ephemeral sculpture. At the bottom of the sheet there are five small architectural cartouches representing aerial views of the sculpture's pedestal, with the artist's signature in the lower left cartouche.
Francisco de Herrera the Younger (1627-1685), Design for a Processional Sculpture of the Vision of St. John on Patmos, with Five Variant Plans, 1660-71