The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"

The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"

Albrecht Dürer

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The subject of this first print from the Apocalypse series is not contained in the book of Revelation, but Dürer included it to identify Saint John as its author. According to The Golden Legend, a collection of stories of the saints’ lives compiled in the Middle Ages, John was brought to Rome by the emperor Domitian and condemned to die in a cauldron of boiling oil for refusing to renounce his faith. Dürer shows him sitting naked in the bath as an executioner fans the flames with a bellows while another pours boiling oil over the saint’s body. Domitian is seated to the left of the saint, dressed as a Turkish sultan, an enemy of Dürer’s Holy Roman Empire.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"The Martyrdom of Saint John, from "The Apocalypse"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.