19th Century, St. John The Evangelist

19th century

St. John the Evangelist

Marble, height 60 cm

This marble statue of St. John the Evangelist is depicted with his most characteristic attributes: the pen, which alludes to his writings, and the eagle, a symbol of the divine inspiration he received on the island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor, where he had been exiled by Emperor Domitian. The eagle refers to the description in the Book of Revelation, according to which the saint is said to have seen and contemplated the True Light of the Word, just as the eagle, according to an ancient belief, is able to gaze directly at the sunlight. Saint John the Evangelist, author of the fourth Gospel, was the son of Zebedee and Salome and the brother of the Apostle James the Greater. According to ancient Christian traditions, John died in old age in Ephesus, the last survivor of the Twelve Apostles, and, due to the speculative depth of his writings, has traditionally been regarded as the theologian par excellence.