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St. John the Evangelist on Patmos
Lucas Gassel, Joos van CleveEurope, Northern Renaissance (1475-1600)
University of Michigan Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, United States
Details
- Title: St. John the Evangelist on Patmos
- Creator: Joos van Cleve and Lucas Gassel
- Date Created: Europe, Northern Renaissance (1475-1600)
- Location: Antwerpen, Belgium
- Physical Dimensions: w74 x h71.8 mm (work)
- Label Copy: Here Saint John the Evangelist pauses, with his writing pen poised above the page and his attention arrested by the vision of the "woman clothed with the sun" hovering over the landscape. This celestial figure was described in his apocalyptic Book of Revelation (12:1-3), a work whose soaring visionary character is evoked by the eagle with outstretched wings, perched next to the saint. The celestial woman appears here as the Virgin and Child, which follows a symbolic interpretation of the passage from the Book of Revelation first put forth in the Middle Ages. Behind Saint John, a vast landscape bustles with human activity; it suggests the Greek island of Patmos where Saint John wrote the Revelation while in exile. For sixteenth-century viewers, the busy harbor scene also resembled port cities of their own time, complete with bridges, fortified walls, and church spires. Joos van Cleve perhaps drew inspiration from his home city of Antwerp, an important commercial and artistic center in which he ran a large workshop and enjoyed a position as one of the city's foremost painters.
- Type: Painting
- External Link: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1958-sl-2.77/1958_2.77.JPG?lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;resnum=1;sel9=ic_exact;size=20;sort=relevance;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=musart_an;select1=starts;q1=1958%2F2.77
- Medium: oil on panel, mounted on panel
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