Collection: St. John the Evangelist on Patmos

ARTIST: Museum Religious Art Classics

ARTWORK NARRATIVE:

Artist: Hans Baldung – c. 1511

A painter and printmaker of great originality, Baldung was trained in Dürer’s Nuremberg studio before he established his own workshop in Strasbourg in 1509. This painting shows Saint John in exile on the island of Patmos, experiencing a vision of the Virgin as he writes his Book of Revelation. The artwork originally joined two others—Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist (National Gallery of Art, Washington) and the Mass of Saint Gregory (Cleveland Museum of Art)—to form a triptych, commissioned by the Order of Sankt Johann in Jerusalem at Grünenwörth in Strasbourg.

His feast day is December 27.