The dream of Saint John Damascene: the Virgin attaches his severed right hand. Drawing, 16--.

Date:
[between 1600 and 1699]
Reference:
651341i
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Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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Credit

The dream of Saint John Damascene: the Virgin attaches his severed right hand. Drawing, 16--. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

A rarely depicted subject. It appears in a fresco commissioned in 1610 from Guido Reni in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, but the composition is very different from the present drawing: the fresco occupies a vertical space, and it shows an angel rather than the Virgin attaching the separated hand--L'opera completa di Guido Reni, ed. E. Baccheschi, Milan 1971, no. 62C, pp. 93-94. A similar story about the restoration of Pope Leo I's hand is in the Golden Legend

Through his three works in favour of sacred icons, written under the protection of the Muslim caliph of Damascus, Saint John Damascene (ca. 675-ca. 749) opposed the iconoclasm of the Christian Emperor Leo III (717-741). Leo deceived the caliph into believing that John was a traitor, as a result of which the hand with which John had written his works was cut off. His legend records that he witnessed in a dream the Virgin, in gratitude for his defense of her images, reattaching his hand like a branch being grafted on to a tree. Saint John Damascene is one of the patron saints of pharmacists and icon painters

Left, ointments in jars and bottles; centre, Saint John Damascene and the Virgin; right, a pen and book representing Saint John Damascene's writings on sacred icons

Publication/Creation

[between 1600 and 1699]

Physical description

1 drawing : black chalk, pen and brown ink, and brown, red, blue and green watercolours ; sheet 29 x 26.7 cm

Lettering

Subl

Reference

Wellcome Collection 651341i

Creator/production credits

Inscription "Subl" (cut off at right) means that the work was formerly attributed to Michele Desubleo (De Subleo); it was latterly attributed to an unidentified Bolognese artist

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