(b. ca. 1450, 's-Hertogenbosch, d. 1516, 's-Hertogenbosch)

St John the Evangelist on Patmos (reverse) - Oil on panel, diameter 39 cm Staatliche Museen, Berlin

The reverse side of the St John the Evangelist on Patmos panel depicts Scenes from the Passion of Christ and the Pelican with Her Young.

The evil suppressed on the obverse bursts out on the reverse of the panel, painted in grisaille, where monsters swarm like luminous deep-sea fish around a great double circle. Bosch employs the mirror motif, showing a mirror of salvation: the Passion of Christ unfolds within the outer circle, culminating visually in the Crucifixion at the top. The Mount of Golgotha is repeated symbolically in the inner circle, in the form of a high rock surmounted by a pelican in her nest. The pelican, who supposedly fed her young with blood pricked from her own breast, was a traditional symbol of Christ's sacrifice. She appears very appropriately on the back of this picture devoted to St John, the beloved disciple who had rested his head, as Dante tells us (Paradiso, XXV), on the breast of the Divine Pelican himself.

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Author: BOSCH, Hieronymus Title: St John the Evangelist on Patmos (reverse) Time-line: 1451-1500 School: Netherlandish Form: painting