Saint John

St. John on Patmos is an oil on oak painting by Hieronymus Bosch painted after 1488. It is made as a right inner wing of two small shutters of a carved altarpiece for the Brotherhood of Our Blessed Lady in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

The structure is composed along a diagonal leading from lower right to upper left: the pictorial elements ascend in hierarchical order from material to the invisible, in other words from the barren earth with the Devil at John’s back, through the saint himself, then through the intermediary of the sky-blue angel up to the Mother of God enthroned on a crescent moon in the clouds. The bird at the bottom left is a falcon - a reference to the symbolic animal of the Evangelist, the eagle.

The bird guards its master's writing tools, which a demon is trying to steal. Demons also throng the dark reverse of the panel. The fire on his head symbolises both his infernal origins and burning desire that is consuming his being. The painting is located in Gemäldegalerie, in Berlin.

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