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The Artist Jean Duvet as Saint John the Evangelist Studying the Apocalypse
The Artist Jean Duvet as Saint John the Evangelist Studying the Apocalypse
Image © Worcester Art Museum, all rights reserved

The Artist Jean Duvet as Saint John the Evangelist Studying the Apocalypse

Artist (French, 1485–about 1570)
Date1555
Mediumengraving on cream wove paper
Dimensions29.4 x 21.5 cm (sheet)
ClassificationsPrints
Credit LineStoddard Acquisition Fund
Object number2006.545
Label TextJean Duvet was the first and arguably finest French engraver of the sixteenth century. However, contemporary critics described his inventive prints as crowded and cacophonous. In 1555, Duvet completed his greatest artistic achievement, a book of twenty-three prints based on the apocalypse as described in Saint John’s Book of Revelation. This print, which served as the title page, depicts a bearded Duvet in the guise of the saint. Here, a pensive John the Evangelist is not presented as the author of the Book of Revelation, but rather scrutinizing a text. Duvet completed this series when he was seventy. The theme of the apocalypse resonated with Duvet’s own anxieties about life and death. As translated into English from Latin, the text above the swan proclaims "Death is upon me and my hands tremble, my sight fails, yet the spirit remains victorious and I have completed my great work.”
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