A8 – Fifth seal – How long?

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters, were killed just as they had been.” (Revelation VI, 9 – 11)

As in A6 (The Saints under the altar), this engraving emphasizes the duplication of the saints. Every saint here is still the black corpse, the horizontal memory of his love and the vertical being of his soul who received the white robe, but will not unite with the body until the Last Judgment. However, we also see a second accent on this engraving, namely that of the metropolis, where unknown saints have to supplement the previous ones until the correct number is reached. In the streets, deprived of their traditional movement, one can see cloisters, pyres, crosses and a reference to Golgotha the hill on which Christ died.

This work was made in Chacras de Coria (Argentina) between the 14th of December 1955 and the 11th of March 1956.