Jacopo di Cione and workshop, 'Saint John the Evangelist', about 1365-70

A bearded saint wearing pink and blue robes looks out at us from this small panel. He carries an open book and a quill pen. He is one of the four evangelists, possibly Saint John, although we cannot see that saint’s usual symbol of an eagle. This painting is one of 12 panels showing full-length standing saints. They are known as the Littleton Pilaster Saints. Six are now on loan to the National Gallery. They probably originally formed the side pilasters of a large altarpiece or polyptych. This may have been painted for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.

Artists generally showed Saint John in medieval and Renaissance art as young and beardless. You can see this in Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze’s Virgin and Child with Ten Saints (National Gallery, London), in the central panel of Jacopo di Cione’s Crucifixion (National Gallery, London) and in the Crucifixion (Robert Lehman Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The latter may once have formed the top section of the polyptych from which the Littleton Saints came.

However, artists also depicted Saint John as older, such as in Zanobi Machiavelli’s Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist (National Gallery, London). The same old figure appears in a number of altarpieces by the Cione brothers – for example, in the left main tier panel of the San Pier Maggiore Altarpiece (National Gallery, London) and in Nardo di Cione’s triptychs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Brooklyn Museum and the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. Here, he also wears pink and blue. He appears in these same colours in the main tier and predella of Giovanni dal Ponte’s Ascension of Saint John the Evangelist (National Gallery, London).

The Cione brothers presumably arranged the Littleton Saints by stacking them on top of each other, like the standing side saints in Jacopo di Cione’s Crucifixion (National Gallery, London), next to a central image of the Virgin and Child. They originally included all four evangelists: this panel, Saint Luke, Saint Matthew (Private collection) and Saint Mark (stolen in 1933). At just under 16 centimetres, the panels of the evangelists are slightly wider than those of the other saints. They have decorative curved mouldings, which the others lack. They could have stood next to the base of the altarpiece, with Saints John and Luke on the left-hand side, looking across towards the central panel. Alternatively, the evangelists might have been right beside the main central panel, facing forward with the narrower saints on the slanted outer sides.