This drawing depicts Saint John in maturity (he may be depicted in youth or old age). He appears seated to the left, possibly on the roots of a tree, holding a writing tablet. Nevertheless, he is not looking at the tablet, but he fixes his gaze towards the eagle, his emblem. The intense abstraction of his face possibly denotes his visionary state. The elements of Saint John’s vision, in other terms, the woman of the Apocalypse, God the Father, angels and the dragon with seven heads, occupy the distant background.

The extensive retouches executed on this drawing mean that, at first glance, it is comparable to the series of drawings for the cloister of Santa Cruz la Real in Granada. It possibly erroneously led several of Cano’s critics to tentatively include this drawing in the Granada series of Dominican themes. More similarities with the Kneeling Figure are likely to exist, probably Saint John the Evangelist, in the National Library, in which a similar sketch is displayed. When disregarding the pigmentation of the watercolour and the reworking, both drawings present similar features in terms of the applied technique and the quality of the lines drawn in pen and ink.

Veliz, Zahira, Alonso Cano (1601-1667): dibujos, Santander, Fundación Marcelino Botín, 2009, p.262-263