St. John the Evangelist

In December 1935 the Frick Collection opened to the public in Henry Clay Frick's former house on Fifth Avenue in New York, and it owned nothing by Piero della Francesca. Two months later a Viennese family collection sold this panel through the New York dealers Knoedler, and the Frick bought it in 1936, its first work by the painter. Saint John stood in the main tier of Piero's altarpiece for the Augustinian church in Sansepolcro, one of four standing saints in front of a low marble balustrade against a blue sky. The dark step at the lower left belongs to the throne in the lost central panel. Piero shows the Evangelist as an old man, barefoot, reading. Along the hem of his robe, light catches a border of pearls, rubies and aquamarines, perhaps a nod to the old story that John once turned pebbles into jewels.