St. John the Evangelist
Purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund with the assistance of the Fellows, 1963
John was an extraordinarily resilient saint. According to tradition, he is the only one of Christ's apostles to live a full life and die of old age. As we see here, however, it was not for lack of trying on the part of his persecutors. In the large miniature, the youthful John, standing on a black-and-white striped floor in front of a richly decorated green and gold background, holds a golden chalice that he blesses with his right hand. A tiny black dragon crawls up from the dregs, thus ridding the cup of the poison that constituted this particular attempt on his life. Below, with hands clasped, John prays inside a cauldron of boiling oil into which he has been thrown by the Emperor Dometian, an attack that he also survived.