#Hard west four evangelists series#

Mark), and thereafter founded the Church of Alexandria and eventually served as its bishop. Mark seems to have served as an interpreter and traveling companion for Peter for a while, transcribing his sermons (which turned into the Gospel of St. Setting aside the technical biblical details about who Mark started as (which never appear in art), St. (Venice: “We have him! You can’t have him! Wa haha! Wa hahahaha!”) Most often depicted: Writing in a book while looking dower, being a winged lion, riding a winged lion.Patron of places: Venice, Egypt, Alexandria.Patron saint of: Lawyers (Barriesters), Venetian Sailors.Occasional attributes: Inscription saying “Pax Tibi Marce Evangelista Meus”.Common attributes: Winged Lion, book, long white beard.The four are a Lion for Mark, a Bull for Luke, an Eagle for John, and a winged person i.e. Spotting the four in a set makes the Evangelists easy to pick out. These animals are always winged, and sometimes covered with eyes. Sometimes the animal alone is used to depict the saint. Any given Evangelist is often sitting near or on his animal, or has the animal as a decorative motif in the frame. The animals come from Revelations 4.7, and their connection to the Evangelists is… vague but firmly rooted in iconograpic tradition. I will thus briefly discuss each of the remaining three gospel-writers, and then treat how one spots them when they’re together.Įach of the four Evangelists has a special symbolic animal, making the set very easy to spot. The four Evangelists serve perfectly, and in Florence at least one sees Matthew, Mark and Luke far more often in the set of four than one sees them individually John is the exception. But another common reason to depict him is when one, for aesthetic symmetry purposes, wants a set of four saints to depict, often for architectural purposes: decorating a row of four vaults or four arches, in the four corners of a frame, on the four sides of a dome or a cabinet, etc. In the last edition of Spot the Saint I discussed John the Evangelist, common in crucifixion scenes and in paintings that want an excuse to show a comely young man.

#Hard west four evangelists series#

The statues on the Baptistery represent the Four Evangelists, who wrote the Gospels, and two further saints – from left to right, St John, St Anna the Prophetess, St Luke, St Mark, St Agnes and St Matthew.We still have plenty of saints to cover, now that the Machiavelli series is done. The Baptistery, on the west end (see photo to left), was added in 1880-1 and has a grey colour, as it is built from a different type of sandstone to the rest of the Chapel. The west wall shows how the Chapel was originally intended to be a much bigger building with doorways, which would have led to a nave, now blocked up and other features which would not normally be found on exterior walls, as this was not planned to be one. On the south side, many faces are carved into the window arches along with animals, such as a stag and ram. On the north wall is a carving of fox running off with a goose, with the farmer’s wife close behind. There are carvings on all of the Chapel’s outside walls although some are hard to distinguish due to the effects of the weather.

This suggests that the foundations took four years to complete, as it is believed that the Chapel was founded in 1446.

William Lord St Clair Fundit Yis College Ye Zeir Of God MCCCCL (1450) High up on the north side of the Chapel (facing on approach from the visitor centre) is a series of shields with the following inscriptions –