St. John the Evangelist

Saint John the Evangelist, the youngest of the 12 apostles, is shown holding a chalice from which small serpents crawl.  According to legend, the priest of the temple of Diana of Ephesus forced John to prove his Christian faith by drinking from a cup containing poisonous venom.  He survived the ordeal and proceeded to revive two men who earlier had drunk the lethal potion.  John's triumph over the power of the serpent was regarded as a victory over the Devil himself, since it was in the guise of a snake that Satan had successfully tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The intricate ornamentation on Saint John's crown includes elements of Gothic architecture such as the trefoil-shaped, or three-lobed, arches.