Rubens painted a picture of this scene as symbolical of the Lord’s Supper, the angel presenting to Elijah the bread and a chalice. Following a custom of some landscape painters who introduced a subject--mythological, historical, or Scriptural--into their pictures, Paul Potter represented the “Comforting of Elijah” in the foreground of one of his pictures. It also occurs in some ancient illuminated Bibles. William Blake’s illustration of the text in Job, “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” is famous for the unusual character of the angels. Like many pictures by this poet, who was esteemed as half mad, it has an element of other worldliness which is rarely seen in works of his era. Of this especial picture Mrs. Jameson wrote: “His adoring angels float rather than fly, and, with their half liquid draperies, seem about to dissolve into light and love; and his rejoicing angels--behold them--sending up their voices with the morning stars, that, singing, in their glory, move.” The Vision of Ezekiel, in the Pitti Gallery, in Florence, is, so far as I know, a unique representation of this subject. Raphael painted it for Count Ercolani in Bologna. It is mentioned as early as 1589, in the Inventory of the Tribune, and has been engraved and copied many times. Jehovah is represented seated in a glory of cherubim’s heads, which are almost unnoticeable by reason of the exceeding brightness illustrative of the text, “And I saw as the color of amber, as the appearance of fire round about within it, from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward. I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.” In accordance with this text also, Jehovah is nude in the upper portion of the figure, the lower portion being draped in purple. Near the Jehovah are the four animals symbolic of the evangelists, the cherub, the lion, the ox, and the eagle, not earthly creations, but mysterious and spiritual as they float along bearing the Messiah, while two small angels are near with outstretched arms. The sky effects of this wonderful picture are fine; the gray clouds are rolling away, as if for the purpose of disclosing the vision. This picture has been criticised on account of the nude figure of Jehovah; it has been said to be a more proper representation of Jupiter than of the Almighty, but Raphael is justified by the text itself.