John on Patmos

Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos, by Titian and workshop

Scenes illustrating the life of Saint John, from the The Trinity Apocalypse

Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos, by Diego Velázquez

Revelation 1:1–11

Commentaries by Harry O. Maier

Works of art by Diego Velázquez, Titian and Unknown Anglo-Norman illuminator

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In the Spirit on the Lord’s Day

Commentary by Harry O. Maier

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Titian and his workshop (1488/1490–1576) painted St John the Evangelist on Patmos to adorn the ceiling of a lay voluntary association which gathered in the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice.

We behold the instant when John ‘in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day heard a loud voice like a trumpet’ behind him, commanding him to write to the seven churches of western Asia Minor (Revelation 1:10). John is positioned on a mountain top, the biblical tradition’s cherished place for receiving divine epiphanies. The painting’s ceiling location would have magnified the verticality that the foreshortening of John’s body further intensifies. The composition situates viewers below and to the right of John so that as they look up to follow John’s vision, they behold God looking directly down not only on John but on them, along with six putti, one of them pulling the clouds open for God’s manifestation.

The source of light behind God’s head heightens the aspect of divine revelation. The composition intensifies the drama of the moment through brilliant colour and atmospheric effects, and its asymmetrical positioning of John off balance and twisting around, his red garment billowing, and his palms thrusting upward toward God’s outstretched hand. The eagle’s turned head and extended wings (lower right) lend further dynamism.

The red book to the left, a Johannine iconographic symbol, is paradoxical. As though about to fall off the edge of the composition, it tells us that here is something words cannot capture. Yet, this will be the very book John writes to send to the seven churches (1:11). We encounter John in an epistemological earthquake. He will see terrifying images and exhort the seven churches to flip common sense understandings of the world on their head. John ‘in the Spirit’—that is, in worship—will learn what seeking God requires, namely, to open ears and eyes to hear and see new things.

This work and the opening verses of Revelation point us to a new grammar for interpreting a world revealed through the Spirit in Scripture. We should not be surprised if, like the John we see depicted here, the Apocalypse throws us off balance.

Writing the Seen, Seeing the Written

Commentary by Harry O. Maier

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The Trinity Apocalypse, named after its repository at Trinity College, Cambridge, was produced in England between 1242 and 1250 for Eleanor of Provence (1223–91) who had recently arrived from France to marry King Henry III in 1236.

It is one of the first and perhaps finest of Medieval English Revelation manuscripts. Its folios include a series of illuminations to accompany two columns of text. In this example, an Anglo-Norman translation of Revelation 1:1–10 (left) accompanies (right) a gloss and spiritual exegesis of it by the Benedictine Revelation commentator Berengaudus of Ferrières (840–92 CE). Above, three vividly coloured scenes illustrate the passage.

At top left, John sleeps on Patmos, with wavy shores surrounded by green water. Above him, an angel stands holding a banderole inscribed with the words ‘What you see, write to seven churches’ (Revelation 1:11). ‘Here is Saint John on the island of Patmos’ is written in the white border above.

In the scene to the right of this episode, we see architectural representations of the seven churches (each church’s name is inscribed above it), along with their angels.

Below, at bottom left, John turns, book in hand, to see a face speaking from a cloud, instructing him to write what he sees and to send it to the churches. To the right of this, John is shown again, prostrate before Jesus, who is standing amidst seven golden lampstands, dressed in royal blue with a golden girdle around his chest. Jesus’s face is shining like gold, his eyes are red, and his feet bronzed. A sword extends from his mouth. He holds seven stars in his right hand (1:13–16). The banderole in his left is a pastiche of Revelation 1:4, 6, 8, 11, 17–19: ‘Do not doubt anything! I am the first and the last, and I lived, and was dead; and behold, I live forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of hell. Write what you have seen, and what is, and what must be done after these things’ (own translation).

Revelation comes to John while sleeping, thus placing him amongst the Bible’s dreamers (Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Daniel, St Joseph). Berengaudus’s gloss offers interpretation even as illustrators turn readers into viewers. Reading, textual commentary, and visual depiction create a whole larger than the sum of its parts inviting our own interpretation and visualization of Revelation’s text; bringing its words to life.

References

Brieger, Peter. H. and Marthe Dulong. 1967. The Trinity College Apocalypse: An Introduction and Description, 2 vols (London: Eugrammia Press)

James, M.R., Nigel Wilkins, and Angela Purnell. 1996. The Trinity Apocalypse (London: World Microfilms Publications)

I John, your Brother

Commentary by Harry O. Maier

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At first glance, Diego Velázquez’s Vision of St John the Evangelist is a study of a young man, eyes cast upward to his right, pen in hand, about to write in the book on his lap.

Only secondarily does one observe what the young man—John—himself sees: a vision of the woman of Revelation 12:1–4 with the moon and the stars (a figure Christian tradition has interpreted as the Virgin Mary), and the dragon waiting to devour her child.

The painting was commissioned for the chapter house of the Shod Carmelites in Seville, to be hung beside The Immaculate Conception, a depiction of a standing Virgin Mary. Velázquez possibly produced the pair to celebrate a recent papal decree defending the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, though the subject was already well-established in Spain and beyond.

Without its companion painting, the miniature scale of the vision of the woman gives unqualified prominence to John. Patmos and surrounding details are little more than a mise-en-scène. The darkly shrouded eagle at left, iconographically associated with John, sets up a contrast with John’s garments, whose folds are animated by the fall of light.

The painting foreshadows what would make Velázquez famous as (among other things) a portraitist: the naturalism with which he brought his subjects to life. His depiction of John as young when on Patmos departs from contemporary treatments of him as old and bearded. This John is an athletic, dark, handsome, moustachioed Spaniard, with high cheekbones, strong nose and jaw, and heavy eyebrows. His full, parted lips, and smooth face express vitality even as his upwardly gazing deep brown eyes reveal receptivity and depth.

Velázquez invites us into the interior life of Revelation’s author. The painting may prompt us to ask, where did the vision that John sees come from? Did it come from beyond him in visions that interrupted his routines, or did it arise internally through rumination and contemplation, partly inspired by the two books at the bottom right, one of them earmarked?

Whatever its source, Velázquez’s depiction of the strength and optimism of this young man poised to write suggests someone with a long future ahead of him, notwithstanding the tradition of his martyrdom.

Christian tradition has often read Revelation as a prophecy of the end of the world. Velázquez’s naturalistic depiction invites us to contemplate what the Apocalypse reveals to us about life here and now.

References

Pacheco, Francisco. 1956 [1638]. Arte de la Pintura, ed. by F.J. Sanchez Canton (Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de D. Juan)

Titian and workshop :

Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos, c.1553–55 , Oil on canvas

Unknown Anglo-Norman illuminator :

Scenes illustrating the life of Saint John, from the The Trinity Apocalypse, c.1250 , Illuminated manuscript (parchment)

Diego Velázquez :

Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos, 1599–1660 , Oil on canvas

Seeing John

Comparative commentary by Harry O. Maier

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Ekphrasis is a term ancient rhetors used to describe a tool of persuasion by which they turned readers/listeners into ‘viewers’. Through vivid language, rhetors/authors animated their descriptions, drawing their audiences deep into the topics they declaimed upon, thereby awakening mental pictures and emotions designed to awaken audience participation.

The opening verses of Revelation are an example of ekphrasis. First person narration intensifies audience experience by having listeners see and hear with John’s eyes and ears. It takes them to Patmos to behold, with John, the Jesus who will come with clouds (1:7); with hair white as wool and snow; eyes ‘like a flame of fire’; feet of ‘burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace’; a voice ‘like the sound of many waters’; ‘a sharp two-edged sword’ extending from his mouth; his face ‘like the sun shining in full strength’ (vv.12–15). Vivid description aimed to fill John’s audience with awe.

Depicting the moment at which John turned to hear the voice speaking from behind him, Titian and his workshop’s Saint John on Patmos captures the drama which John’s ekphrasis conveys. Upturned hands simultaneously signify a traditional gesture of prayer and astonishment. John’s radically foreshortened body is positioned off centre, while viewers are placed beneath his unstably placed legs, giving them an unconventional perspective.

This expresses a key goal of Revelation, to challenge audiences with new ways of seeing the world. The one who was pierced, it tells its hearers, has freed them, making them a kingdom, priests, who join with John in adoration (vv.5–6). The paradox of Revelation is its acclamation that the one whom the Romans crucified in fact rules not only them, but all of creation, and brings abundance and healing to all (v.21), from alpha to omega, from start to finish and that he does this through his death. No wonder John is almost knocked off his feet!

Diego Velázquez’s painting, St John on Patmos, pulls us in a different direction. Revelation arrives in a different way here. Has an insight come that he is about to record? Is he imagining or really seeing a vision of the woman of Revelation 12? The artist has expended his energy on depicting John as a young man in contravention of iconographical tradition. Landscape and even the vision fade away as the artist draws our attention to John’s facial features, his clothing, his hand poised to write. Revelation can come in the way Titian depicts, but it also arrives through contemplation, quiet prayer, and reading. Such revelations may arrive slowly, gradually, in small steps, but they are no less dramatic. We can be moving along in one direction when we hear the lure of a voice speaking from behind us, and suddenly our course is reset. In the example of John, we may recognize the experience of embarking upon a journey whose ending is unknown. Nevertheless, John models belief in the promise that—come what may—the one who has slowly revealed himself is one who alone holds the keys of death and Hades. As difficult as life so often is, there is indeed nothing to fear (vv.17–18).

Or, are we dreaming? The illuminator of the Trinity Apocalypse has John fast asleep on the island of Patmos. Revelation becomes a set of dreamscapes. He thus numbers John amongst the Bible’s great dreamers—as well as anticipating those, like Martin Luther King, Jr, who will continue to dream with the Bible. The illuminated folio assists ekphrasis by making the text’s contents visible. It seeks to involve us; even to immerse us, as text becomes part of the vision and vision part of the text.

Whether in the inclusion of such illuminations alongside the text of Revelation, or the addition of supplementary commentary like that of Berengaudus (as here), or the emendations of later copyists (also discernible in this folio), these manuscripts reveal themselves to be dynamic phenomena which are more than the sum of their parts.

This is a graphic example of Roland Barthes’ insight that ‘the author is dead’ (Barthes 1977), namely, that texts once composed require readers to bring them to life and discover things the author did not perhaps mean or even imply. Every act of interpretation adds something more to John’s initial vision. Applying Barthes’ insights to the Trinity Apocalypse illuminator’s depiction of John as asleep and dreaming, together with Berengaudus we become dream interpreters. As he does, we apply the words to our lives and so revision ourselves and the world around us.

In that case, it is not only John who is on Patmos; we are there as well, as we turn to look at the one who addresses us with the promise of eternal life.

References

Allen, Garrick V. 2020. Manuscripts of the Book of Revelation: New Philology, Paratexts, Reception (Oxford: OUP)

Barthes, Roland. 1977. ‘The Death of the Author’, in Image, Music, Text, trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana)

Whitaker, Robyn J. 2015. Ekphrasis, Vision, and Persuasion in the Book of Revelation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)

Next exhibition: Revelation 4