Earliest interpreters of a new religion, the four Evangelists, St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John, occupy of necessity an exceptional position in the history of the Church, and, as a natural consequence, in that of Christian art. The symbols associated with them, some, such as the book, the ink-horn, the pen, or reed, etc., of self-evident meaning, others more or less obscure, and variously interpreted, are numerous, but one and all must originally have had reference to the character of the writers of the Gospels as witnesses to the truth. No known portrait of any one of these witnesses having been preserved, the representations of them are, of course, purely ideal, embodying, as far as lay in the power of each interpreter, the hints and suggestions contained in the Gospels themselves. It was not, however, until comparatively modem times that any attempt was made at what may be called idealized human presentments of the Evangelists, who were for a considerable time indicated exclusively by symbols or emblems, which later became associated with them as mere accessory attributes.
Most ancient of these attributes were the four scrolls of the Gospels, generally placed in the four comers of a Greek cross, which were, however, soon superseded by the more visionary and poetic four rivers, emblematical of the waters of life which should flow throughout the world from the teaching of the Evangelists. In the Catacombs and on old Christian tombs preserved in the Vatican and elsewhere, are many examples of streams flowing from the Lamb, the well-known symbol of Christ Himself, or from the mount on which He stands. Early ecclesiastical writers were fond of comparing the Evangelists to the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates, and these names are actually inscribed in a certain cud Roman mosaic beneath the streams issuing from the feet of the Lamb. Sometimes the place of the Lamb is taken by a palm-tree, from the roots of which escape four rivulets; and in later times the same idea was suggested by the association with the Ascension of Christ of four rivers, the work of the successors of the great Master having begun at the close of His earthly career.
Far more important and significant than the scrolls or the rivers were the four Symbolic Creatures which gradually became accepted as types of the Evangelists, although it is impossible to fix any date for their first introduction. Founded on the descriptions in Ezekiel and the Revelation of St. John of the winged figures which stood about the throne of the Most High, they were peculiarly fitted to express the characters of the writers of the Gospels, who were brought into immediate touch with the very spirit of the Savior’s teaching.
The Cherub with the face of a man was chosen as the symbol of St. Matthew, the Evangelist of the Hebrews, because he began his Gospel with the genealogy of Christ, and dwelt in his record rather on the human than on the divine side of the Master’s character. To St. Mark, who wrote specially for the Romans, was assigned the Lion, because he lost no opportunity of proclaiming the royal dignity of the Master, and also because he began his record by an allusion to ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness,’ the desert being always associated in the Hebrew mind with the lion, or the king of the beasts. In course of time the Lion became typical of the Resurrection, and early writers explain the association of ideas by allusions to the popular belief that young lions are born dead, and are brought to life on the third day by their father breathing over them. Occasionally, as by St. Justin, the lion is assigned to St. Matthew because he proclaimed the royal genealogy of Christ; but examples of this are rare in art.
St. Luke, the Evangelist of the Greeks, who preluded his narrative by an account of the vision of St. Zacharias in the Temple and brought out in his Gospel the priestly mission of Jesus, is symbolized by the Ox, or, rather, the Calf, which was the emblem of sacrifice amongst the Jews; whilst St. John, the teacher of the whole world, who made no distinction between Jew or Gentile, bond or free, and whose noble eloquence is as essentially human as it is visibly inspired, has for his emblem the royal Eagle, which can gaze unblinkingly at the sun. Alone of all mankind it was given to him to look into the face of God and live. He was justly surnamed the ‘Theologian’ by the Greeks, for to him was revealed the very essence of Divine truth; he understood and loved the Word made flesh, and his Gospel, though the most abstruse of the four, is yet, strange to say, the one which appeals most directly to the heart, as w^ as the intellect, of mankind.
The four creatures representing the four Evangelists soon became typical of the Incarnation, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ, and when grouped together in the quaintly grotesque form known among the Greeks as the Tetramorph they were supposed to symbolize Christ Himself as Man, King, High Priest, and God. In the Middle Ages, as in a miniature of the ‘Hortus deliciarum’ preserved at Hohenburg and in a window at Friburg in Bresgau, the Tetramorph is a creature with the body of a horse and the four-winged heads of the mystic creatures. Of its feet, one is human, one that of a lion, one of an ox, and one of an eagle, whilst on its back is seated a crowned woman supposed to represent the Church. Elsewhere the woman is seated in a car drawn by an eagle, an ox, and a lion, whilst an angel holds the reins and guides the quaint team. The same idea was somewhat differently carried out in Western representations of the Tetramorph, as in the Sacramentary of Metz, in which the eight wings encircle a four-armed human figure with four heads, one large and three small, the plumage of the wings forming the clothing.
In his ‘Vision of Ezekiel,’ now in the Pitti Gallery, Florence, Raphael represents the four symbolic figures in a manner worthy of their deep significance, for in it the Ox, the Lion, and the Eagle uphold the Holy One, whilst the Seraph symbolizing St. Matthew gazes with awestruck reverence into His face.
The symbols of the Evangelists once fixed, it became customary amongst artists to associate with each figure some scene suggested by the narrative of each. Thus, St. Matthew is often represented with the Virgin, either as a newly-made Mother, or appearing in glory in the clouds above, both being suggestive oi the whole story of the Incarnation. With St. Mark is shown some scene connected with the Resurrection so carefully described by him. The Savior is issuing from the tomb, or the holy women are hastening to bring spices, etc. St. Luke is often associated with the childhood or the crucifixion of Christ, because he dwelt so minutely on both, and St. John with some episode significant of the divinity of the Lord, on which he laid such stress; the Transfiguration or the Ascension, for instance, although he did not actually describe either in his Gospel. Sometimes, too, St. John has near him a manger in which the Holy Child is ^tween an ox and an ass, a piece of symbolism interpreted by early writers to mean that the Old and New Testaments, of which the ox and the ass were types, were united in the person of Christ, so that Jews and Gentiles were reconciled by Him.
At first the symbolic animals were always winged, in allusion to the fact that the Evangelists they typified were heavenly messengers, the bringers of good tidings to earth. In the Catacombs fragments of bas-reliefs were found in which the winged cherub and the winged ox occurred on either side of the Lamb, and in some ancient Christian churches, notably in the mosaics of S. Prassede and SS. Cosma e Damiano in Rome, the four winged creatures are of constant recurrence, either two and two on either side of the Lamb, or of Christ as a dignified human figure, as in the tympanum of the entrance of Chartres Cathedral, or in a row above or below the altar. Sometimes the heads alone are shown, or each creature is at full length, with four wings, and a book held in the paws, hoofs, hands, or claws, as the case may be. In early illuminated MSS. such figures are numerous. They also appear in many old stained-glass windows, as in the celebrated rose window of Strasburg, and the same idea was beautifully carried out in comparatively modem times by Donatello in the bronze bas-reliefs in the Basilica of St. Antony at Padua. Another very interesting example occurs in a little picture brought from Sebastopol by a French soldier after the Crimean War, and reproduced in the Revue Archeologique for 1850, in which the four symbolic creatures appear in the angles above and below the Holy Trinity, whilst the celestial hierarchy is ranged around the central scene.
In course of time the mystic emblems were very generally abandoned. Occasionally, as in the quaint figures in Fra Angelico’s ‘Life of Christ,’ preserved in the Florence Academy, the symbolic head still surmounted the human body, but it gradually became customary to represent the four Evangelists as noble and venerable men, each with a distinctive character of his own. Sometimes also, for a reason easy to understand, they were associated with the four neat prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. In the great south rose window of Chartres, for instance, St. Matthew is seen upheld by Isaiah, St. Luke by Jeremiah, St. John by Ezekiel, and St. Mark by Daniel, illustrating in a succinct and forcible manner the intimate connection between the Old and New Testaments; in a word, the unbroken continuity of the Divine revelation.
In ecclesiastical decoration the Evangelists are also often represented with the four great Doctors of the Church, and occasionally the symbolic animals were given to the latter as well as to the former, both having been looked upon as witnesses to, and interpreters of, the same great truths. More rarely Evangelists and Doctors are alike associated with the heathen Sibyls, whose mission it was in pre-Christian times to reveal the will of the Lord of Heaven.
Amongst the many beautiful representations of the four Evangelists in their human character may be specially mentioned the mosaics, dating from the sixth century, in S. Vitale at Ravenna; the frescoes by Cimabue in the Upper Church of S. Francesco at Assisi, in which the figures, unfortunately much damaged, are larger than life and full of character; those by Giotto on the vaulting of a chapel in S. Giovanni Evangelista at Ravenna, in which the Evangelists with their symbols above them are grouped with the four Doctors; the four bas-reliefs by Donatello in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo at Padua, in which each Evangelist is seated with his Gospel upheld before him by his own symbolic creature; the bronze bas-reliefs by Sansovino on the Choir stalls of S. Marco, Venice; the medallions by Della Robbia in the church of S. Giobbe, Venice, and those from the same hand in S. Croce, Florence; the frescoes by Domenichino in S. Andrea della Valle, Rome, which rank amongst that master’s finest works; and, above all, the four groups of the Evangelists and doctors of the Church by Correggio in the pendentives beneath the cupola of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista, at Parma. Forming part of a grand scheme of decoration of which the main subject IS the Vision of St. John at Patmos, these frescoes mark the culmination of the genius of their author, and are amongst the finest extant realizations in religious art of the ideal characters of the immediate followers of Christ. Each Evangelist has his own individual character. St. Matthew turns to dictate to St. Augustine, who pauses in his writing to listen reverently to his great predecessor: St. Mark and St. Gregory are communing together; a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit by which both were inspired, is whispering into the ear of the latter; St. Luke and St. Ambrose are seated side by side in quiet contemplation, whilst St. John seems to be making clear some puzzling difficulty to St. Augustine. Into the frieze above are worked the symbols of the Evangelists, and those of the four doctors are upheld by cherubs, which form a kind of setting to the seated figures. Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).