Some examples of the ideal and devotional figures of St. John, as evangelist and prophet, will give an idea of the variety of treatment in this favourite subject:—
1. Ancient Greek. St. John, with the head of an eagle and large wings, the figure fully draped, is soaring upwards. In such representations the inscription is usually ‘Quasi aquila ascendet et avolabit’ (‘Behold, he shall come up and fly as the eagle.’ Jer. xlix. 22).
2. Perugino. St. John as an aged man, with long grey beard and flowing hair, attended by a black eagle, looking up at the Madonna in glory.[129]
3. Raphael (?). St. John, young and beautiful, mounted on the back of an eagle, and soaring heavenwards: in one hand he holds a tablet, in the other a pen: sea and land below. This treatment, which recalls the antique Jupiter bestriding his eagle, appears to me at once too theatrical and too commonplace for Raphael.[130]
4. Correggio. St. John seated writing his gospel; the eagle at his feet is pluming his wing: inscribed ‘Altius cæteris Dei patefecit arcana.’ One of the series of Evangelists in the Duomo of Parma—wonderfully beautiful.
5. Domenichino. St. John, full length, life size; young and beautiful, in an ecstasy of inspiration, and sustained by two angels; the eagle at his feet: formerly in the Giustiniani Gallery;[131]—finer, I think, than the St. John in Sant’ Andrea. Another, half length, a scroll in his hand, looking upwards as one to whom the glory of the heavens had been opened;—you see it reflected in his eyes,—while love, wonder, devotion, beam from his beautiful face and parted lips: behind him hovers the attendant eagle, holding the pen in his beak; near him is the chalice, with the serpent; so that here he is in his double character of apostle and evangelist.[132] Domenichino excelled in St. Johns, as Guido in Magdalenes; perhaps the most beautiful of all is that in the Brera, at Milan, where St. John bends on one knee at the foot of the throne of the Madonna and Child, his pen in one hand, the other pressed to his bosom, and looking up to them with an air of ecstatic inspiration. Two little angels, or rather amoretti, are in attendance: one has his arms round the neck of the eagle, sporting with it; the other holds up the cup and the serpent. Every detail is composed and painted to admiration; but this is the artistic and picturesque, not the religious, version of the subject.
St. John is frequently represented with St. Peter, because, after the ascension, they taught and acted in concert. In such pictures, the contrast between the fiery resolve and sturdy, rugged grandeur which is given to St. Peter, and the refinement, mildness, and personal grace of St. John, produces a fine effect: as in Albert Dürer’s picture,[133] where John is holding open the Gospel, and Peter apparently reading it; two grand and simple figures, filling the mind as we gaze upon them. As this picture was painted after Albert Dürer became a Protestant, I have thought it possible that he might have had some particular meaning in thus making Peter study the Gospel of John. At all events, Albert Dürer was quite capable of such an intention; and, whether intended or not, the picture may be, and has been, thus interpreted. The prophets and the poets often say more than they intended, for their light was for others more than for themselves: so also the great painters—the Raphaels and Albert Dürers—prophets and poets in their way. When I have heard certain critics ridiculed because they found more in the productions of a Shakspeare or a Raphael than the poet or painter himself ever perceived or ‘intended,’ such ridicule has appeared to me in the highest degree presumptuous and absurd. The true artist ‘feels that he is greater than he knows.’ In giving form or utterance to the soul within him, does he account to himself for all the world of thoughts his work will excite in the minds of others? Is its significance to be circumscribed either by the intention and the knowledge of the poet, or the comprehension of the age in which he lived? That is the characteristic of the second-rate, self-conscious poets or painters, whom we read or study because they reflect to us a particular meaning—a particular period,—but not of the Homers and Shakspeares, the Raphaels and Albert Dürers; they speak to all times, to all men, with a suggestive significance, widening, deepening with every successive generation; and to measure their depth of meaning by their own intention, or by the comprehension of their own or any one generation, what is it but to measure the star of heaven by its apparent magnitude?—an inch rule will do that!
But to return from this digression. In devotional pictures we often see St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist standing together; or on each side of Christ, or of the Madonna and Child. There is a peculiar propriety and significance in this companionship: both are, then, to be considered as prophets; they were, besides, kinsmen, and bore the same name; and St. John the Evangelist was the disciple of John the Baptist before he was called by Christ. Here, again, the contrast between the dark, emaciated, hairy prophet of the wilderness, and the graceful dignity of the youthful apostle, has a striking effect. An example at hand is the bronze bas-relief on the tomb of Henry VII.[134] Madonna pictures, in which the two St. Johns stand before her throne, occur frequently. I remember, also, a marble group of the Virgin and Child, in which the two St. Johns, as infants, are playing at her feet, one with his eagle, the other with his reed cross.[135]