Since it first became known to scholars in 1932, this painting has been celebrated as an early masterpiece by the great Sienese painter, Simone Martini. Below the saint, on the marble ledge before him, the panel is dated to 1320, a moment when Simone was rapidly establishing himself as Siena’s leading painter, following the death of Duccio di Buoninsegna a year before.
The panel shows Saint John the Evangelist placed behind a parapet of pale marble veined with green and pink. Identifiable by his youthful appearance and the red and blue robes he wears (the colours he wears in Duccio’s Healing of the Man born Blind), he furrows his brow and clasps his hands together in a state of acute, tumultuous grief. The emotional tenor of his face and pose is echoed by the remarkably expressive drapery which flows around his body, its nervous and constantly changing lines echoing John’s tense and anguished expression. With characteristic sensitivity, Simone conveys not just the drama of the saint’s emotions, but balances this with an elegance and decorum which came to define his art.
Saint John’s inclined head and insistent gaze toward the left suggest that he was originally conceived to look toward another image. His pose and attitude are familiar from contemporary depictions of Christ’s crucifixion, and it seems most likely that the object of his agonised attention would have been an image of the dead Christ (Man of Sorrows). This painting is now lost, but surviving evidence on the Saint John panel provides clues about the work’s original format. Still intact within its surviving original frame, the painting bears traces of hinges on the left-hand side. This demonstrates that the panel was designed to form part of a folding ensemble, most likely a small devotional triptych. This would have had a central panel of the Man of Sorrows, flanked on the right by Saint John the Evangelist and on the left by the grieving Virgin Mary. The prominent inscribed date on the present picture would have formed the end of a longer inscription running along the lower edges of the now lost companion panels, which would probably have included Simone’s name and a statement of his authorship.
It is likely that the three component panels would have been the same size. This makes reconstruction of the triptych’s original appearance and format somewhat complex, since it would not have been able to close in a conventional manner (with narrower wing panels closing over a wide central element). Again, however, physical evidence holds clues which can help in proposing a reconstruction of Simone’s original design. The hinge marks on the Saint John panel are found not at the front edge of the frame, as might be expect if the panel was intended to simply fold inwards, but instead are located on the rear left-hand edge, suggesting it must have folded in a slightly different way. The most likely reconstruction of the whole triptych proposes that the left panel of the Virgin would have been fixed to the central panel in a conventional manner and would have folded directly over the Man of Sorrows. The right-hand panel of Saint John the Evangelist would have been hinged in such a way that it could be folded over the top of the other two and then probably secured with a clasp. The attachments, secured to the rear left-hand edge of the panel, may have been pieces of leather, long enough to allow the panel to be folded up and over the other panels in this way. A similar format was used for another hinged triptych of equally sized panels depicting the Virgin, the Man of Sorrows and Saint John the Evangelist by a 14th-century Venetian painter, now in Dordrecht (private collection). When folded, the Saint John panel would have been the outermost of the three, with the back of the painting as the only visible part. As would be expected for a portable panel painting of this type, the reverse is painted with a design intended to evoke inlaid stone, or the leather binding of a book.
When fully open, Simone’s triptych would have presented an affecting image for private devotion. Focusing on the body of Christ as its central theme, the imagery was designed to encourage its viewer to contemplate his sufferings during the Passion and to engage emotionally with his plight. No evidence survives about who the triptych was originally painted for. The Man of Sorrows was a popular image, especially among the mendicant (preaching) orders who promoted close engagement with the suffering body of Christ among their members and adherents. The particular focus of the original triptych on the body of Christ has led to the suggestion that it may have been made for a Dominican patron, or someone whose devotional interests aligned with that order. Christ’s body would have suggested strong allusions to the Eucharist, the consecrated bread understood to become the physical body of Christ at the Mass. During the early years of the 14th century in Italy, the significance of the Eucharist was gaining in importance, particularly in Dominican circles. This eventually culminated in the official ratification of the Feast of the Corpus Christi in 1317 and the canonisation of Thomas Aquinas in 1323, a Dominican theologian who had been influential in encouraging these devotions. Such connections may have been important for the person who commissioned Simone’s painting and perhaps suggest something about the devotional environment for which this remarkable work was created.
