Saint John on Patmos

Date

1839-1840

Creator

On his return to Paris, Flandrin’s first major commission was for a series of murals in the Chapel of Saint John at the Church of Saint-Séverin, in the Latin Quarter...The subjects for the murals, which had already been chosen by the parish clergy in cooperation with the prefecture, were the Calling of Saint John, the Martyrdom of Saint John, the Last Supper, and Saint John on Patmos. Flandrin probably created the four oil paintings in the Snite Museum collection to show the client how the final compositions would appear on the walls of the chapel. […] The final murals in the Chapel of Saint John are nearly identical to the Snite Museum’s four small oil paintings. If these were indeed the original images presented for approval by the parish and the officials of the prefecture, then Flandrin made very few changes in transferring his compositions to the walls of the chapel. […] [T]he painting of Saint John on Patmos concludes the mural cycle with a mystical image of the elderly saint recording his visions of the future. To his right stands a white-clad angel who seems to be directing the revelations that Saint John receives. To his left is an eagle, the symbolic animal traditionally associated with John as an evangelist. Overhead, in the Gothic arch formed by the architecture of the chapel, a brilliant light leads the viewer’s eye upward as if to share in the visionary event. This is the only one of the oil paintings that was recreated without revisions in the final mural version. Likewise, the extant preparatory drawings show few changes to the composition, indicating that Flandrin had probably settled on this image quite quickly. from Weisberg, Breaking the Mold: The Legacy of the Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin Collection of Nineteenth-Century French Art (Notre Dame, 2012)