African

Ancient Mediterranean

Asian

European and American

Art since 1900

European and American Art

Of French and Italian ancestry, Valentin spent his life in Italy and was a particularly close follower of the Italian artist Caravaggio, whose brief career transformed painting in the early years of the 17th century. Like Caravaggio, Valentin is noted for his dramatic manipulation of light and shadow and for his unidealized depiction of figures. His St. John combines a solid, fleshy physicality (including earthy details like a shadow of beard stubble) with a sense of divine inspiration.

Accompanied by his emblem, the eagle, John sits with pen in hand between an apparently completed book, possibly symbolic of the Old Testament, and a scroll on which he has written the first sentences of his Gospel. As he looks upward, light from an invisible source picks out his face, his writing hand, and the scroll as the dominant elements in the picture.