Saint John the Evangelist

The present work is a studio version of the painting at Bob Jones University, Greenville. According to Carlo Cesare Malvasia, Reni's first biographer, in order to satisfy the demand for his work, the artist ran one of the largest and most prodigious studios in Europe. During his last sojourn in Rome he had sixty pupils working for him and he is believed to have employed up to eighty in his studio in Bologna in the 1620s. As a result, it has been historically difficult to assess the degree of the artist's own involvement in a large amount of the work that emanated from his studio. Distinctions between autograph works, retouched compositions or ritocchi and good copies by pupils or assistants were often deliberately blurred.