After the restoration of the Saint-John chapel’s frescoes at the Saint-Severin church in Paris in 2022, the drawing presented here is a moving testimony to their creative process. It highlights Paul Flandrin's role in the design and execution (between 1839 and 1841) of this decorative programme, alongside his older brother Hippolyte, who had been entrusted with the project.

1. Paul Flandrin, a life in the complicity of his brother Hippolyte

Along with Édouard Bertin and Alexandre Desgoffe (who later became his father-in-law), Paul Flandrin is one of the few pupils of Ingres to have specialized in landscape painting. Born into a family of Lyonnais painters[1] , Paul took his first drawing lessons from his eldest brother Auguste (1804-1842), who became thereafter a lithographer and a portraitist. After studying at the Lyon School of Fine Art, he moved to Paris with his other brother Hippolyte, where they joined Ingres' studio in 1829.

In 1832, Paul won the historical landscape sketching competition, but failed to win the grand prize. Without a pension, he decided in December 1833 to join his brother Hippolyte, winner of the Prix de Rome in 1832, at the Villa Médicis in Rome to further his training. His attraction to landscapes was strengthened by the many trips he made with his brother to the Roman countryside and by the discovery of the bright Italian light. In Rome, Paul also became drawing teacher to the children of Prince Borghese, developing his taste for drawing.

Back to Paris in 1838, they exhibited at the Salon of 1839, where Paul received a second-class medal. Not yet able to make a living from his painting, he assisted his brother, who had just received his first major commission for the church of Saint-Severin in Paris: the decoration of the chapel of Saint-John the Evangelist which was completed in March 1841. In 1842, Paul was in turn commissioned to decorate the baptismal font chapel at Saint-Severin. Thereafter, the two Flandrin brothers, united by a tender complicity, continued to work together on various public and private décor programs (Château de Dampierre, Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, Saint-Paul de Nîmes, Saint-Vincent de Paul in Paris) until Hippolyte's departure for Rome in 1863 (where he died in 1864).

In 1870, fleeing the war between the Imperial and Prussian armies, Paul Flandrin was received by the painter Auguste Pichon in Angers. After a year and a half in Angers, Paul Flandrin returned to Paris in 1872. Settled at 10 rue Garancière, he divided the rest of his time between his Paris studio and frequent painting trips to the provinces. For the next thirty years, the painter participated annually to the Salon until his death in March 1902, at the age of ninety-one.

2. The frescoes of the Saint-John chapel at Saint-Séverin church in Paris

The commission for the frescoes of the Saint John chapel was the first major project entrusted to Hippolyte Flandrin, who was assisted by his brother Paul and the painter Louis Lamothe (1822-1869), another of Ingres's pupils, also from Lyon.

The iconographic program combines Gospel scenes with scenes from the life of Saint John the Evangelist. The narrative begins on the right-hand side upper wall, with The Vocation of Saint John and Saint James[2], and is being pursued on the left-hand side wall with The Last Supper (in which Saint John is depicted next to Christ) with Saint John writing the Apocalypse above it. The final episode is depicted opposite the Last Supper on the right-hand wall; it is the Martyrdom of Saint John, during which he is immersed in a cauldron of boiling oil.

The narrowness of the chapel, while allowing a two-register representation, makes it difficult to photograph these frescoes without distortion.

Our angel is preparatory (without wings) to the one depicted in the "Saint John writing the Apocalypse" fresco. The presence of this angel is a literal illustration of the very beginning of the Apocalypse: "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John."[3] We see in our drawing the foreshadowing of the angel's imperious gesture, as he gazes down at Saint John, while pointing with his raised right hand to the celestial world and inviting him with his left hand to transcribe this revelation onto the scroll resting on the evangelist's laps.

While Hippolyte was responsible for the overall iconographic program, our drawing bears witness to Paul's role in the compositional ideas, for which he produced several preparatory drawings, such as this one.[4] Once the motifs were in place on the walls[5] , the paintings were also jointly executed, and in the words of Stéphane Paccoud, "it would be futile to try and distinguish their respective hands".

A commentator wrote about this scene in 1841 in the Revue des deux Mondes: "The upper ogival painting shows Saint John in his old age, writing the Apocalypse under the dictation of an angel, on the island of Pathmos. This piece is the most completely successful of the four. The Saint John is very handsome, with his tawny complexion, immense white beard and body furrowed by years and austerities. The angel has an admirable pride of movement and authority of gesture; the coloring is also very satisfying."

3. Framing

Our drawing has been framed in a gilded and stuccoed wooden frame from the same period as the work.

Main bibliographical references

Hippolyte, Auguste et Paul Flandrin: une fraternité picturale au XIXe siècle, exhibition catalog, Paris, Musée du Luxembourg and Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1984

Hippolyte, Paul, Auguste. Les Flandrin artistes et frères, exhibition catalog edited by Elena Marchetti and Stéphane Paccoud, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 2021

[1] His father was a miniature painter.

[2] According to the Gospels, Saint James the Greater is the elder brother of Saint John.

[3] Apocalypse 1-1 – English Standard Version

[4] The collaboration between Hippolyte and the various artists who assisted him on major decorative projects is developed by Stéphane Paccoud in a chapter of the 2021 exhibition catalog.

[5] A large preparatory drawing by Hippolyte Flandrin featuring the entire composition for “Saint John writing the Apocalypse” is in the Musée de Dunkerque; it was included in the 1984 Flandrin exhibition under number 26.