Symbol of the Evangelist John (the Eagle)

This eagle is a fragment of a ceiling. In the mid-1540s Titian painted a set of panels for the ceiling of a room in the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, a Venetian lay confraternity, and the eagle is the symbol of Saint John the Evangelist, to whom the scuola was dedicated. It belonged with the symbols of the other three Evangelists, along with reclining nudes and putti, arranged around a central scene of John on the island of Patmos. Because it was made to be seen from the floor, Titian painted the bird sharply from below, wings spread and body foreshortened as if it were dropping toward the viewer. The panels were later taken down and moved here, so a shape built for a high ceiling now hangs at eye level, where you can read exactly the trick of angle he worked into it.