St. John in art

German Version English Version

--- St. John at the Last Supper ---

With the huge commercial success of Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code", some of the theories from this book became very popular. One of them says that Leonardo da Vinci placed Mary Magdalene and not St. John next to Jesus in his Last Supper painting. I saw a lot of people taking this assumption for real - they look at the painting and shout: "Oh yes, it's a woman!" They seem to believe that Leonardo's version of that famous scene would be unique. Fact is, that many other artist gave St. John, who was called "the beloved disciple" in the Bible, a certain look, which is now considered by many people as "feminine", but not necessarily five centuries ago. Since ancient times he was believed to be very young, so young that he did not even have a real growth of beard. You can also see his long hair and the devouted gestures on many other paintings of the Renaissance. This hairstyle was very fashionable for young Italians at the time of Leonardo. It should be noted that even other apostles were sometimes depicted in the same way.

We must try to understand the viewpoint of these artists, who grew up in an androcentric environment - men and boys had a far more important position in this society than in the western world of today. The ideal of beauty since the 19th century became very gynocentric - a cute face is since then usually interpreted as "feminine", although most traits of a woman aren't specifically female. Compare the face of a pretty actress with the ones of young boys and you see it yourself: what still remains of the so called "Kindchenschema" makes most people believe that women would be the beautiful gender. Since St. John was considered to be very young, he was simply not old enough to look very adult. That is the reason, why people mistake him for a female, just like many long haired boys were mistaken for girls in the 70s by elderly people. They were not used to that look just like most readers of Dan Brown's novel are not familiar with depictions of St. John, done by other artists. I decided to show you some examples to underline my arguments.

Duccio di Buoninsegna 1308 - 1311	Giotto di Bondone 1320 - 1325	Jaume Serra 1370 - 1400	Bertram von Minden 1390 - 1400	Andrea del Castagno c. 1447
Jaume Baço Jacomart c. 1450	Dieric Bouts the elder 1464 - 1467	Jaume Huguet c. 1470	Cosimo Rosselli 1481 - 1482	Domenico Ghirlandaio c. 1486
Gil de Siloe c. 1500	Luca Signorelli 1502	Hans Schäufelin 1515	Andrea del Sarto 1520 - 1525	Hans Holbein the younger 1524 - 1525
Jacobo Bassano 1542	Juan de Juanes c. 1560	El Greco 1568	Daniele Crespi 1624 - 1625	Valentin de Boulogne 1625 - 1626

--- Other depictions of the Apostle ---

The following paintings present the apostle in another context. Like in the Last Supper, he was depicted by most artists as a long haired teenager. Other painters, especially those from Germany and the Netherlands, gave him an older appearance, but even there he is almost always beardless. Again you'll see that Leonardo's way to portray him was hardly so unusual as Dan Brown wants us to believe. Even artists, who couldn't see Leonardo's "Last Supper" before they started doing their own work, depicted the apostle like that, so everybody, who claims they just copied Leonardo's idea, is therefore wrong.

Duccio di Buoninsegna "Washing of the feet" 1308 - 1311	unknown Artist "Jesus Christ and the Apostle John" c. 1320	Andrea da Firenze "Crucifixion" 1370 - 1377	Jean Malouel "Pietà" 1400 - 1410	Antonio da Firenze "Crucifixion" 1400 - 1450
Dieric Bouts the elder "Christ in the House of Simon" c. 1440	Antonello da Messina "Crucifixion" 1475	Sandro Botticelli "Pietà" c. 1490	Raffaello "Crucifixion" 1502 - 1503	El Greco "Crucifixion" 1588

--- St. John the Evangelist ---

According to the Christian tradion, the Apostle John and John the Evangelist would be one and the same person. It doesn't matter, whether modern experts share that idea, since artists from medieval times, the Renaissance and the Baroque era only knew, what everybody was told back then. That is why the Evangelist is often depicted in the same way as the Apostle. Sometimes we see a bearded John the Evangelist, especially when the artist wants to show how he looked at the end of his life as he was said to have died at a very old age.

Pietro Lorenzetti c. 1320	Jan van Eyck 1432	Juan de Juanes 1445 - 1450	Martin Schongauer 1470 - 1475	Hans Memling 1475
Veit Stoss 1477 - 1489	Hieronymus Bosch c. 1490	Fra Bartolommeo 1504	Gerard David 1505	Hans Baldung c. 1515
Andrea del Sarto 1517	Correggio 1520 - 1524	El Greco 1594 - 1604	El Greco c. 1608	Joachim A. Wtewael 1610 - 1615
Jacob Jordaens c. 1620	Anthonis van Dyck c. 1620	Alessandro Algardi 1629	Francesco Furini c. 1630	Alonso Cano 1646 - 1650

--- Pictures of young males by Leonardo
and other Renaissance artists ---

Here are some other examples that give you a good idea, how young males were usually depicted in the art of the Renaissance. As I said before, these faces look "feminine" to modern eyes, but not to the sculptors and painters themselves. Following Dan Brown's logic, a sketch for the Apostle Philippus would also "clearly show a woman". His assumption that Leonardo would have replaced John with Mary Magdalene is getting even more absurd, when you keep in mind that many biographers, for example Serge Bramly, tend to think that Leonardo and several other Renaissance artists were mainly, if not exclusively attracted to these beardless young males. There are more pictures that tell us how wrong the ideas of Dan Brown are, but I think these examples are already obvious enough.

Leonardo "Study of a naked Man with a stab" 1476 - 1480	Leonardo "Sketch of St. Philip for The Last Supper" c. 1495	Leonardo "Heads of an old Man and a Youth" 1495 - 1500	after Leonardo "Bacchus" 1510 - 1515	Leonardo "St. John the Baptist" 1513 - 1516
Donatello "David" c. 1440	Verrocchio "David" 1475	Sandro Botticelli "Portrait of a young Man" c. 1477	Sandro Botticelli "Portrait of a Youth" c. 1482 - 1483	Pinturicchio "Portrait of a Boy" 1482 - 1485
Giovanni Bellini "Madonna with Child and St. Peter & St. Sebastian" c. 1487	Domenico Ghirlandaio "Adoration of the Magi" 1488	Lorenzo Costa "St. Sebastian" 1490 - 1491	Perugino "Portrait of a Youth" 1495	Raffaello "Portrait of Pietro Bembo" c. 1504