"La bellezza in codice" ...an unusual exhibition

 I take part of a special exhibition about illuminated manuscripts "La bellezza in codice", with the Collettivo Spicelapis at San Daniele del Friuli. This is my illustration and some details:

 it's a personal reinterpretation of the miniature below "WHORE OF BABYLON" Beatus of Liébana, Commentaria in Apocalypsin (the ‘Silos Apocalypse’), Santo Domingo de Silos 1091-1109"

Babylon is a very strange and mysterious figure:

The Whore of Babylon or Babylon the Great is a Christian figure and also place of evil mentioned in the Book of Revelation in the Bible. Her full title is given as "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth."
Many Biblical scholars believe that "Babylon" is a metaphor for the pagan Roman Empire (the seven mountains= the seven hills of Rome) at the time it persecuted Christians, historicist interpreters commonly used the phrase "Whore of Babylon" to refer to the Roman Catholic Church, other to refer to the corrupt church or false doctrines (read more on wikipedia:Whore of Babylon).

The "great whore", of the biblical Book of Revelation is featured in chapters 17 and 18:

" ...I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.  And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth." 

In the Oxford Dictionaries this figure is an archaic, derogatory of the Roman Catholic Church.