Saint John the Evangelist – Carved, Painted and Gilded Limewood

The relief harmoniously combines two stylistic tendencies: on the one hand, the frontality and symmetry of volumes, evident in the seventeenth-century drapery with its broad folds and in the plastic details such as the buttons and the orderly foliage from which the bust emerges; on the other, the grace of the face, with its delicate, smooth features, the soft tonal transitions and the lightness of the curling hair, anticipating the eighteenth-century sensibility. Only the gaze—intensely expressive and slightly oblique—retains a pathetic accent of Baroque taste.

The stylistic analysis suggests a dating to the first quarter of the eighteenth century, within a cultural area encompassing Northern Tyrol, Upper Austria, Salzburg and Southern Germany, regions characterized by the persistence of late-Baroque accents reinterpreted through more dynamic solutions.

For its quality and formal language, the sculpture shows affinities with the Salzburg and Tyrolean production close to Johann Meinrad Guggenbichler (Einsiedeln, 1649 – Mondsee, 1723). Several analogies can be found with the sculptor’s corpus, such as the fan-shaped neckline of the tunic and the long, slender nose. Despite these similarities, the Saint John stands out for its broader drapery and the more decisive, sharply carved treatment of the hair, leading us to identify the author as an anonymous master active in the early eighteenth century within that prolific German-speaking artistic milieu, animated by numerous workshops.

Its dimensions and typology suggest that it originally formed part of a pulpit parapet, likely accompanied by the other Evangelists, completing a wooden structure richly decorated with phytomorphic motifs and angelic figures.

The work is accompanied by an expertise by Professor Giuseppe Sava.