The Four Evangelists

The Four Evangelists, dated around 1650 and in Palazzo Abatellis Palermo, groups Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — the Gospel authors — as a unified figure group united by the shared act of writing and the divine inspiration that guided their texts. The four evangelists were frequently represented together as the textual pillars of the Christian faith, each with his traditional symbol: the angel (Matthew), lion (Mark), ox (Luke), and eagle (John). By around 1650 Preti was at a productive midpoint in his career, moving between Rome, Naples, and eventually Malta. The Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo holds Sicilian and Italian paintings of multiple centuries, its location on the island reflecting the long history of Sicilian connections to Neapolitan artistic culture that made Preti's work well-known in the southern Italian region.

The challenge of the four evangelists group is to maintain individual identity across four figures while creating compositional unity. Preti organizes them through the shared activity of writing — each holding a quill or manuscript — and through a unified lighting scheme that moves across all four figures from a single source. The symbolic animals, if included, provide differentiation without requiring major compositional disruption. The grouping creates a roughly pyramidal figure mass that anchors the composition's center.