Saint John the Evangelist

In 1812 the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg chose 30 paintings to decorate churches in Crimea, a territory the Russian empire had annexed less than 30 years earlier. Among them was a set of four evangelists by Frans Hals, bought for Catherine the Great by 1773. This is Saint John, and after that journey south he drops out of the record for almost two centuries. He surfaced in a private collection in Spain, was sold at Sotheby's in London in July 1997, and went on to the Getty. When the canvas reappeared, traces of red paint in the lower right corner turned out to be the remains of its Hermitage inventory number. Hals shows the young saint looking up from his book with the quill still on the page, an inkwell at the edge of the table and his eagle half in shadow behind his shoulder.