In the last supper, Peter is generally on the right of Christ, and St. John on the left: he leans his head down on the bosom of Christ (this is always the attitude in the oldest pictures); or he leans towards Christ, who places his hand upon his shoulder, drawing him towards him with an expression of tenderness: this is the action in the fresco by Raphael lately discovered at Florence. But I must reserve the full consideration of this subject for another place. Where, instead of the last supper, our Saviour is represented as administering the Eucharist, St. John is seen on his right hand, bearing the cup. In the crucifixion, when treated as a religious rather than an historical subject, St. John stands on the left of the Cross, and the Virgin on the right; both in attitudes of the profoundest grief and adoration mingled. In general the _motif_ of this sacred subject does not vary; but I remember examples, in which St. John is seen trampling a Jew under his feet; on the other side the Virgin tramples on a veiled woman, signifying the old law, the synagogue, as opposed to the Christian Church, of which the Virgin was the received symbol. When the crucifixion is a _scene_ or action, not a _mystery_, then St. John is beheld afar off, with the women who followed their divine Master to Calvary. St. John and the Virgin Mary returning from the crucifixion: he appears to be sustaining her slow and fainting steps. I have only once met with this beautiful subject, in a picture by Zurbaran, in the Munich Gallery. In the descent from the Cross, St. John is a chief actor; he generally sustains the head of the Saviour, and is distinguished by an expression of extreme sorrow and tenderness. In the entombment he is sometimes one of the bearers, sometimes he follows lamenting. In a print of the entombment after Andrea Mantegna, he is not only weeping and wringing his hands as usual, but absolutely crying aloud with the most exaggerated expression of anguish. In pictures of the descent of the Holy Ghost, St. John is usually a conspicuous figure, and in the foreground. In the assumption of the Virgin, he is also conspicuous, generally in front, as the pendant to St. Peter, and gazing upwards with ecstatic faith and devotion. Of course there is great variety in these representations: the later painters thought less of individual character and significant propriety of arrangement than of artistic grouping; therefore the above remarks have reference to the early painters only. In the scenes taken from the Acts, St. John is always in companionship with St. Peter, and becomes the secondary figure. [Illustration: 63 St. John (Lucas v. Leyden)]