NICOLAS RÉGNIER | SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST ON PATMOS

The property of a financial institution;

By whom anonymously sold, London, Sotheby's, 3 July 1996, lot 264. 

A. Lemoine, Nicola Régnier (alias Nicolo Renieri) c. 1588-1667. Peintre, collectionneur et marchand d'art, Paris 2007, pp. 224-5, cat. no. 20, reproduced. 

Though Flemish by birth, Régnier is most closely associated with the French painters such as Simon Vouet, Valentin de Boulogne and Nicolas Tournier who were working in Rome in the second decade of the seventeenth century. These artists were profoundly influenced by Caravaggio, who had died in 1610. Régnier was in Rome from 1615 until 1626, when he moved to Venice. Given the Caravaggesque sense of light and dynamic composition, the present painting likely dates from his Roman period, or just shortly thereafter.

Regnier repeated the subject in a less elaborate composition, where the Saint is shown with his head in a similar pose but at half-length.¹  The dramatic use of the billowing red drapery of Saint John's cloak as a backdrop is a technique found in other paintings by the artist, such as Saint Sebastian attended by Saint Irene, where the contorted figure of the wounded saint is set against a red cloth.²

1. Private collection, Paris.  See A. Lemoine, under Literature, pp. 224-5, cat. no. 19. 

2. Ferens Art GAllery, Kingston upon Hull. See A. Lemoine, Ibid., cat. no. 70, reproduced pp. 150-51.