St. John the Evangelist and St. Luke

16th century, Brescia school

St. John the Evangelist and St. Luke

(2) Oil on panel, 42 x 15 cm

The two panels depict Saints John the Evangelist and Luke: the symbols of the tetramorph that accompany them make the figures easily identifiable: the eagle – representing the evangelist's spiritual and theological vision – for John and the ox – which refers to Zechariah's sacrifice – for Luke. The representation of the evangelists with their respective symbols of the tetramorph spread throughout France and Spain from 1100 – one of the earliest examples coincides with the sculptural relief on the portal of the cathedral of Burgos, in Castilla y Leon – and flourished in Italy between the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, still being popular in the sixteenth century. The representation of Saint John with the eagle was implemented in the sixteenth century, among others, by Correggio in the frescoed lunette for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma; among the artists who represented Saint Luke with the ox in the sixteenth century was the Florentine Giorgio Vasari, who developed this iconographic theme in the painting made for the chapel of San Pio in the Vatican. The vivid and brilliant colours of the figures, which stand out against a clear blue sky, recall some of the most famous works of the Brescian masters of the mid-sixteenth century: a reference for the artist of the painting could certainly have been the diptych of Saint Giovita and Saint Faustino on horseback in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Valvendra in Lovere, with which the panels share the bright colours and the soft contours. On an iconographic level, the artist could have looked instead to the art of Bergamo, especially to Moroni, with particular reference to the Saints John the Evangelist and Paul, two panels currently in a private collection cited by the art historian Mina Gregori in Giovan Battista Moroni of 1979 (p. 285, nn. 149-150; p. 335, figs. 5-6).