Saint Jean à Patmos

Bosch painted Saint John the Evangelist on this panel around 1489, showing the apostle exiled on the rocky island of Patmos as he received the visions that became the Book of Revelation. An angel points him toward the woman crowned with stars in the sky. For a subject this solemn, look at the lower right corner. There Bosch set a small dark creature, part insect, part bird, with a human face wearing spectacles, perched right next to his signature. It is generally read as the devil, and possibly as a sly self-portrait doubling as the painter's mark. The reverse of the panel is painted too, in grey monochrome scenes of Christ's Passion, which tells us it once folded as part of a larger altarpiece. It hangs now in Berlin.