Saint John the Evangelist

The Master of the Straus Madonna, an anonymous Florentine painter active around the mid-14th century, created this panel of Saint John the Evangelist around 1350. Named after a celebrated Madonna and Child in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, this anonymous master worked in the Orcagnesque tradition that dominated Florentine painting after the Black Death. Saint John the Evangelist, author of the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation, was among the most frequently depicted saints in medieval Florentine art.

Executed in egg tempera on gold-ground panel, the work shows the firm drawing and solid volumetric modeling characteristic of the Orcagnesque school. The saint is depicted in the standard iconographic formula with his eagle attribute and gospel book, rendered with the precise craftsmanship of a skilled Florentine workshop.