Baldung Grien, Hans

Saint John on Patmos

1511; Tempera and oil on wood; Overall 89.5 x 76.8 cm, painted surface 87.3 x 75.6 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A painter, printmaker, and stained-glass designer of great originality, Baldung came from a learned family of lawyers and doctors. He may have trained in Strasbourg, but at eighteen entered Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg. This panel originally joined two others-- Saint Anne with the Christ Child, the Virgin, and Saint John the Baptist (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) and the Mass of Saint Gregory (Cleveland Museum of Art)--to form a stationary triptych. This was probably the altarpiece commissioned by the Knights of Saint John in Strasbourg that is mentioned in a payment record of 1510/11, about five years after Baldung left Dürer's workshop.