[1][2] The painting features Saint John, banished to Patmos, writing the Book of Revelation amidst a classical landscape background.

[3] Patmos is portrayed by Poussin as an open environment, showing a new world created from the old, symbolized by the ruined Greek buildings.

In the foreground lies Saint John, posed similarly to an Ancient Greek god.

From the hills to the sky, the rest of the landscape is an imaginary setting created defying the rules of atmospheric perspective.

[5] The painting is part of a pair, the other one being one of Saint Matthew, that was presented to the secretary of Pope Urban VIII Gian Maria Rosicoli.