A depiction of St. John the Evangelist. It would in all likelihood have belonged to one of the Evangelist series of Melchor Pérez de Holguín, and was a popular iconographic model in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, forming part of the Counter Reformation repertories of countless Baroque painters.

St. John the Evangelist, the youngest of the disciples and the one “Jesus loved”, appears surrounded by the symbols that represent him, making reference to the story narrated in Jacobus de Varagine’s Golden Legend, which tells of Emperor Domitian’s attempt at assassinating the apostle, something I will come back to in greater detail shortly.

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