St John the Evangelist 

Titian painted this depiction of Saint John the Evangelist for the Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. Observe the eagle accompanying John, a symbol drawn from ancient mythology and appropriated into Christian iconography to represent the saint's lofty, soaring intellect and his profound spiritual insights. The eagle, an ancient symbol of power and vision, appears in similar forms across cultures and epochs. In ancient Rome, it was associated with Jupiter, king of the gods, and later adopted as an emblem of imperial authority. But here, its symbolic trajectory shifts. The eagle is now a symbol of divine inspiration, linking John to the heavens, a visual metaphor for his divine inspiration and prophetic voice. Consider the psychological weight of such images; the eagle is not merely a bird but a vessel of cultural memory, its successive and cyclical adoption revealing our enduring fascination with symbols of power, knowledge, and divinity.