São João Evangelista em Patmos

This canvas was never meant to hang at eye level. Titian made it for the ceiling of the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista, a lay brotherhood in Venice that had taken John the Evangelist as its patron saint. That is why the figure is seen from below, flung back and sharply foreshortened, one arm thrown up as the voice of God reaches him on Patmos, the rocky island where he was living in exile. Painting bodies to be read from underneath was still a fairly new problem for Venetian artists, and Titian answered it with a saint who seems to tip out of the frame toward the viewer overhead. In 1806, under Napoleon, the brotherhood was suppressed and the picture was taken down and carried away.