Filippino Lippi, St. John Revives Drusiana
1487-1503
Fresco
Strozzi Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
In the center a pallid Drusiana returns from death at John's command, to the joy of her friends on the right. She was a Christian woman of Ephesus who the Golden Legend says "loved St. John and well kept his commandments." In the story she dies just before John returns to Ephesus from exile, and her friends tell him she had hoped to be able to see him on his return. He then tells her to arise and make him a meal.
The pallbearer on the right raises his hand to the one on the left, who hustles an old man and a swarthy young woman out of the left frame. The old man is dressed like the pagan priest in Lippi's fresco of
St. Philip at the Temple of Mars on the facing wall, and he has the same white beard and moustache. The brisk offstage movement recalls images in which Synagoga is pushed out of one side of the frame while Ecclesia is ushered in at the other
(example).
The effect then is to express the demise of paganism among the people of Ephesus, where "the people made three hours long a great noise and cry, saying there is but one God, and that is he whom St. John preacheth" (Golden Legend #9).
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Read more about St. John the Evangelist.
Photographed at the chapel by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.