The Making of Agnus Dei

Building an image of the Lamb from Genesis to Revelation

Agnus Dei began with an image Christians have returned to for centuries: the Lamb of God.

The drawing itself came relatively quickly because the image of the Agnus Dei is so prevalent throughout church history: a lamb, sometimes wounded, sitting or standing, carrying a cross or victory banner, resting upon a book or scroll—or sometimes simply standing alone.

The longer process was deciding which of these inherited symbols should remain, what should surround the Lamb, how each element should appear, how the symbols should relate to one another, and why an image with such a long history should be crafted again for modern eyes.

Rather than simply reproduce a traditional Agnus Dei, I wanted to understand the biblical imagery behind it and reconstruct the icon from those pieces.

Instead of a single scene, I constructed an icon, if you will, from a collection of biblical images: lamb, blood, doorway, cross, chalice, scroll, seals, stars, and victory.

At its center is the paradox John sees in Revelation 5: a Lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered.

The composition ultimately became an exercise in reducing everything toward the Lamb.

The stars establish the unseen.
The doorway creates the threshold.
The blood leads inward.
The cross establishes the axis.
The scroll waits beneath him.
The seven seals name the one standing above them.

And at the center is not a lion, a warrior, or a king seated safely beyond suffering.

It is a wounded Lamb carrying the sign of victory.

That is the strange center of John's vision in Revelation: the Lamb was slaughtered, the Lamb stands, and the Lamb is worthy.

Agnus Dei is my attempt to hold these images together.

What follows are reflections from my study and the decisions that shaped the image. My hope is that they offer a way into the work and not simply to understand its symbols, but to slow down, look, and contemplate what they reveal.

May they guide you in your own visio divina.

The Star Field — The Seen and Unseen

The first boundary of the image is the star field. The stars give the central image distance. The Lamb appears almost as something revealed within the darkness rather than simply placed against a black background.

I use stars throughout my work as a visual language for the unseen realm and not just outer space, but a reminder that creation is larger and stranger than what is immediately visible to us.

This imagery begins with creation itself. On the fourth day, God creates the lights of the heavens and appoints them to mark signs, seasons, days, and years, and to rule over the day and night (Genesis 1:14–18). They belong to creation, ordered and appointed by the Creator.

But elsewhere in Scripture, the language of the heavens opens onto something more mysterious. When God describes laying the foundations of the earth in Job 38:4–7, the “morning stars” sing together while the “heavenly beings”, literally, the sons of God, shout for joy. The poetry places the stars and the heavenly beings in parallel, presenting creation as an event witnessed and celebrated by the heavenly realm.

The Psalms give us another glimpse. In Psalm 89:5–7, the heavens praise YHWH while an “assembly of the holy ones” and “heavenly beings” surround him in his divine council. The heavens are not portrayed merely as empty space, but as the setting of a reality populated by beings beyond the human world.

Deuteronomy adds yet another dimension. Israel is warned not to worship the sun, moon, stars, and “all the host of heaven,” which God has allotted to the nations, because Israel itself has been taken as YHWH's own inheritance (Deuteronomy 4:19–20). Later, Deuteronomy 32:8–9 describes the Most High dividing the nations according to the number of the divine beings, while Israel remains YHWH's allotted portion.

Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm helped shape the way I began noticing these threads throughout Scripture: the stars, heavenly host, sons of God, nations, and divine council. I don't intend the stars in Agnus Dei as a literal map of the spiritual world, nor do I mean that every biblical reference to a star represents a spiritual being. Rather, they have become a visual shorthand for the cosmic and unseen dimensions of God's creation.

That language ultimately leads to the vision that inspired Agnus Dei. In the Gospels, Jesus says that if his disciples were silent, “the stones would shout out” (Luke 19:40). In Revelation, that image becomes cosmic: every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea joins in worship of the One seated on the throne and the Lamb (Revelation 5:13).

So the Lamb does not stand against an empty black background. He stands before the seen and unseen creation: before the heavenly host, before the powers over which he has triumphed, and before us, the viewer.

Creation does not happen unwitnessed. Neither does the victory of the Lamb.

The Doorway — Blood as a Threshold

The red opening surrounding the Lamb began as geometry, but eventually became one of the most important symbols in the piece.

Its shape intentionally echoes the doorway of Passover.

In Exodus 12:3–13, Israel is instructed to slaughter a lamb and place its blood on the two doorposts and lintel of the house. The blood marks the threshold. What lies beyond that blood-marked doorway is life.

But the Passover lamb is not only slaughtered.

It is eaten.

The same instructions that command Israel to place the lamb's blood upon the doorway also command the household to roast the lamb and consume it together (Exodus 12:7–11). The lamb is sacrificed, its blood marks the entrance, and its body becomes the meal of the people delivered through that doorway.

For Christians, it is difficult not to hear echoes of this Passover meal in the Eucharist. At his final Passover meal with his disciples, Jesus takes bread and identifies it with his body, then takes the cup and identifies it with his blood, “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26–28). Paul makes the connection explicit when he writes, “our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

This is part of why the chalice sits directly beneath the Lamb in Agnus Dei. The Eucharist is not an unrelated symbol added to the image. It belongs to this larger biblical movement of lamb, sacrifice, blood, meal, deliverance, and life, a sacrament Christ has given to his church through which his people continue to receive and remember the meal he gave them.

The Lamb in Agnus Dei therefore stands within that same visual language: a doorway marked by blood.

And the blood begins with the Lamb himself.

The wound in his side intentionally echoes the pierced side of Christ at the Crucifixion. In John 19:34, a soldier pierces Jesus' side with a spear, and blood and water flow from the wound. In the image, the Lamb bears that wound openly. He is victorious, but the evidence of his slaughter remains.

His blood then pours downward into the chalice.

This is where sacrifice and sacrament meet. The blood of the Lamb is not depicted as a few restrained drops. It is poured out generously. The chalice receives what flows from his side, recalling Christ's own words over the cup: this is my blood...poured out for many.

But the blood does not stop at the cup.

It overflows.

The same red line continues downward, passes through the scroll and beyond it, and ultimately becomes the blood-red threshold surrounding the Lamb. What begins as the wound becomes the cup; what fills the cup becomes the doorway.

In Leviticus, God tells Israel that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). Blood signifies life given. So the abundance of blood in Agnus Dei is not intended merely as an image of death, but life. 

The Lamb pours out his life.

His life is given for us.

And paradoxically, the place of slaughter becomes the opening into life.

The Passover doorway already gives us this image: blood marks the passage from death into life. Hebrews develops the imagery further, describing our confidence to enter the sanctuary “by the blood of Jesus” and the “new and living way” he has opened for us (Hebrews 10:19–22).

The doorway is not simply a frame around the Lamb, but it is the very access into the presence of God.

Three Crosses

There are three crosses within the image.

They are not three different crosses, but three ways the cross of Christ appears within the composition: in blood, in wood, and in victory.

The Cross in Blood

The first emerges directly from the blood of the Lamb.

As the blood pours from the wound into the chalice and continues through the center of the image, it intersects the horizontal line of blood beneath the Lamb and forms a cross.

This is the cross in blood.

After everything described in the doorway, the Passover lamb, the Eucharistic cup, the blood poured out for us, I wanted the viewer to to be reminded of the Crucifixion.

Christian imagery can make the cross so familiar that it becomes almost abstract. We wear it, hang it on walls, place it above our churches, and trace it over our bodies. But crucifixion was bloody, violent, humiliating, and excruciating. Jesus did not merely die. His body was wounded, pierced, and nailed to a cross (John 19:16–37).

The blood forming the cross is meant to resist forgetting that.

The Lamb's blood is beautiful in what it accomplishes, but the act from which it flows was not.

The Wooden Cross

Behind the Lamb stands a second cross: the wooden cross itself.

Where the first cross is formed through blood, this one is physical and structural. It is the instrument upon which Christ was crucified.

I wanted it to remain simple: two pieces of wood intersecting behind the Lamb. It recalls the historical event beneath all of the symbolism. Before the cross became a Christian sign, it was an object of Roman execution.

The New Testament refuses to move beyond that scandal. Paul writes, “we proclaim Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23), and later tells the Corinthians that he determined to know nothing among them “except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

So even in an image of the victorious Lamb, the wooden cross remains.

The victory cannot be separated from the Crucifixion.

The Cross of Victory

But the wooden cross does not stand alone, instead it flies the banner. This is the third appearance of the cross: the cross of victory.

The cross-banner is an ancient Christian image associated with the risen and victorious Christ. In Agnus Dei, the slaughtered Lamb carries it himself. The instrument of execution has become the standard of the victorious King.

This is the paradox at the center of Revelation 5:5–6. John is told that the Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered. But when he turns to see the victorious Lion, he sees instead “a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered.”

The Lamb is slain. 
Yet the Lamb stands.

The banner therefore does not erase the cross beneath it. It rises from it.

Even after the resurrection, Christ's wounds are not erased. The risen Jesus still shows his disciples the wounds in his hands and side (John 20:24–29). Resurrection does not rewrite the Crucifixion as though it never happened.

It reveals its victory.

So the three crosses move through the image:

The blood cross to remind us of the cost.
The wooden cross to remind us of the Crucifixion.
The banner cross to remind us of the victory.

The very cross that bears the slaughtered Lamb becomes the sign carried by the Lamb who stands.

The Scroll and the Seven Seals

Beneath the Lamb is the scroll from Revelation 5:1–10.

John sees a scroll in the right hand of the One seated on the throne, written on both sides and sealed with seven seals. A mighty angel asks, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” But no one in heaven, on earth, or under the earth is found worthy to open it.

John weeps.

Then he is told that one has conquered and is worthy to open the scroll.

One reason I chose to depict a scroll is simply because that is what the text describes. Many traditional images of the Agnus Dei depict the Lamb resting upon a book, often understood as the Book of Seven Seals. That image has a long and beautiful history in Christian art, but I wanted to return to the object John actually describes: a scroll sealed seven times.

The seven circular seals therefore come directly from Revelation.

What is written on them does not. That was an artistic decision.

Across the seven seals I placed seven Greek uppercase letters:

Χ Ρ Ι Σ Τ Ο Σ

CHRISTOS meaning Christ. The Anointed One. The Greek equivalent of Messiah.

The choice began with a simple visual discovery: Christos has seven Greek letters, one for each seal. But it became more than a convenient arrangement.

I kept returning to a question Jesus asks his disciples in Matthew 16:15–16:

“But who do you say that I am?”

Peter answers:

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

The Greek word translated “Messiah” there is Christos—ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ.

That confession became the inspiration for placing the word across the seals.

Revelation asks, Who is worthy?

The seals answer by declaring who the Lamb is.

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ.

Revelation does not say that these letters appear on the seals, and I don't intend them as an illustration of something John claims to have seen. They are my own addition to the image: a confession embedded within the image.

And that confession reaches backward through the biblical story.

The Lamb is the Christ, the Anointed One in whom Christians see the promises of Scripture converging. He is the promised offspring who will ultimately crush the serpent (Genesis 3:15). He is the king who comes from the line of David, the shoot that grows from the stump of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1–10). And in Revelation, John is told that “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered”, only to turn and see a Lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered (Revelation 5:5–6).

The word is not meant to announce itself immediately. From a distance, you see seven seals. As you approach the image, the individual letters become legible. Eventually seven separate marks resolve into a single declaration:

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ.

The Lamb is the Christ.
The Lamb is slain.
The Lamb is victorious