DOLCI, Carlo
(b. 1616, Firenze, d. 1687, Firenze)

St John the Evangelist in Patmos

1656
Oil on copper, 38 x 49 cm
Galleria Palatina (Palazzo Pitti), Florence

This small copper piece is most probably a preparatory example for two other versions of this subject on large canvases, although traces of these have been lost. The scene illustrates the episode narrated in the book of Apocalypse (XII, 1-6): the Evangelist, exiled on the Greek island of Patmos, receives a vision of the woman of the Apocalypse, elevated against a crescent moon and threatened by a terrible seven-headed dragon.

The copper creates a whole with the spectacular 17th-century gilded wooden frame, which shows genuine virtuosity in the intertwined dragons' heads that refer to the subject of the painting.