St. John the Evangelist on the Isle of Patmos (1475–80): Art, History and Details

St. John the Evangelist on the Isle of Patmos (1475–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Christian tradition says that Saint John the evangelist was banished by the Roman Emperor Domitian to the Greek island of Patmos at the end of his life. There, the visionary wrote the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation. Martin Schongauer's engraving describes in detail one of the visions that the saint experienced. Seated at the seashore, the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared to him, clothed with sun, standing on a crescent moon, and crowned by twelve stars. here, John turns the pages of his book and holds a pen in his right hand, anxious to record what he has just seen. His attribute, the eagle, rests on a rock right before him.

Object facts

• Title: St. John the Evangelist on the Isle of Patmos
• Date: 1475–80
• Creator attribution: Martin Schongauer (German, c. 1450–1491)
• Culture: Germany
• Type: Print
• Technique: engraving
• Dimensions: Image: 16 x 11.3 cm (6 5/16 x 4 7/16 in.); Sheet: 16 x 11.3 cm (6 5/16 x 4 7/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Engraving
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1952.36

A detail from the museum

In the artist's time, St. John the Evangelist was believed to have written the Book of Revelation on the Island of Patmos. Today, many biblical scholars consider John of Patmos a separate author who wrote the text about 90 years after the death of Christ.

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Richards, Louise. "Engravings by Martin Schongauer." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 42, no. 3 (March 1955): 43-45.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.