San Lucas

Frans Hals is remembered for his laughing cavaliers and lively militia portraits, so a solemn evangelist bent over his desk is a surprise from his hand. He painted a set of the four gospel-writers around 1625 in Haarlem. The series later travelled east, bought in the 18th century for the Russian imperial collection, and then it simply dropped out of sight. In 1958 a young art historian, Irina Linnik, was going through a storeroom in the museum at Odessa when she recognised two dark, forgotten canvases as the lost evangelists Luke and Matthew. Her find set scholars hunting for the rest. This Saint Luke, quiet and grey-bearded over his open book, still belongs to the Odesa museum today.