Evangelie [ The Gospels]
Moscow : [A. M. Radishevskii.M., typographer; ], 1606
NYPL, Spencer Collection

This copy of the Gospels was printed by the Belarusan typographer Anisim Radyshevsky (in Russian, Anisim Radishevskii, ca. 1560-ca. 1631). The ornamentation and coloration of this leaf, showing the evangelist John dictating his Gospel to Saint Prochoros on Patmos Island, suggest the stylistic "Orientalism" of Muscovite design in the 17th century. Few extant copies of this work have such brilliant hand-coloring, suggesting that the Library's copy may originally have belonged to the contemporary Moscow Patriarch (later Saint) Germogen (ca. 1530-1612).

It was St. Irenaeus who first adopted the four sacred creatures of Ezekiel's vision as the symbols of the four evangelists, attributing the lion to St. John and the eagle to St. Mark (in the west, the opposite attribution was adopted). Both traditions must have co-existed in Russia, until, toward the end of the 16th century, the western attribution of the eagle replaced the lion on icons of St. John the Evangelist.