The next step was the combination of the emblem with the human form, i.e. the head of the lion, ox, or eagle, set upon the figure of a man. Here is a figure of St. John standing with the head of an eagle, holding the gospel (54). There is another rudely engraved in Münter’s work, with the eagle’s head, wings upon the shoulders, and a scroll. I remember another of St. John seated, writing, with the head and clawed feet of an eagle, and the body and hands of a man. Such figures as a series I have seen in ornaments, and frequently in illuminated MSS., but seldom in churches, and never of a large size. A very striking and comparatively modern example of this peculiar treatment occurs in a bas-relief on the door of the College of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence, at Castiglione, in which the Four Evangelists are represented as half-length human figures, amply draped and holding the gospels, each with the emblematic head and large outspread wings (55). The bronze bas-reliefs of the Evangelists on each side of the choir of St. Antonio, at Padua, are similar in form, and very fine, both in conception and workmanship.
52 St. John (Mosaic, ekeventh century)
This series of full-length figures is from the first compartment of the Life of Christ by Angelico da Fiesole.[102] In the original the figures stand round a mystic circle, alternately with the prophets (56). We must remember, that however monstrous and grotesque such figures may appear to the eye, they are not more unnatural than the angelic representations with which we are so familiar that we see in them beauty only—not considering that men with the wings of birds are as merely emblematical and impossible as men with animal heads. It is interesting, and leads the mind to many speculations, to remark that the Babylonish captivity must have familiarised the Israelites with the combination of the human and animal attributes in the same figure. The gigantic bas-reliefs from Nineveh show us winged bulls with human heads, and the human form with the eagle’s head and wings. This figure, for example, (57) is not unlike some early figures of St. John, if we substitute the book and the pen for the basket and the pine-cone.
