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| Jacopo Tintoretto Embarkation of St Helena ca. 1555 Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| Juan Bautista Maíno Landscape with St Anthony Abbot ca. 1612-14 Prado |
In European painting the subject of landscape was traditionally subordinate to the urgent narratives of history and religion. Landscape began to break free and stand on its own in the 17th century, but we are not looking at any of those early freestanding landscapes here. Today's paintings instead show landscape backgrounds subject to the so-called pathetic fallacy – which held that nature expresses the mental states and moods of the humans inhabiting it.
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| Juan Bautista Maíno St John the Evangelist on Patmos ca. 1612-14 Prado |
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| Juan Ribalta St Matthew & St John the Evangelist ca. 1625 Prado |
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| Giambattista Tiepolo Stigmatization of St Francis ca. 1767-69 Prado |
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| Francisco Camilo Death of St Paul the Hermit ca. 1649 Prado |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Noli me tangere ca. 1506 Louvre |
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| Andrea Sacchi Vision of St Romuald ca. 1631 Vatican Pinacoteca |
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| Gian Paolo Panini Classical Ruins with St Paul Preaching ca. 1735 Prado |
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| Eustache Le Sueur St Paul Preaching at Ephesus 1649 Louvre |
In the foreground above, St. Paul cheerfully incites a bonfire of books. It is interesting that the Ephesians of Gospel Times are shown burning heaps of leather-bound codexes printed on paper with metal type, products of technologies that in the days of St. Paul were more than a thousand years in the future.
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| Pierre Patel Landscape with Rest on the Flight into Egypt 1652 National Gallery (U.K.) |
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| Mateo Cerezo Mystical Marriage of St Catherine 1660 Prado |
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| Juan Antonio Escalante Communion of S. Rose of Viterbo ca. 1667 Prado |
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| Francesco Collantes St Onuphrius ca. 1645 Prado |
I am grateful for the beautiful reproductions made available by Museo del Prado.