Here’s a holiday snap from northern France: a carved stone panel showing the four evangelists, from the mid sixteenth century. While it’s common to see the writers of the gospels holding books and accompanied by their symbols (from L-R here: Mark with a winged lion, John with an eagle, Luke with a winged bull, and Matthew with an angel), I was struck that this panel depicts all four of them caught in the very act of writing. Matthew (whose gospel was for a long time believed to be the earliest) balances a scroll on his knee, while the angel holds up his ink pot. Luke makes use of a lectern and the other two work with much more compact-looking codices. The carver included scroll flourishes behind each figure – and if the panel was once polychromed, presumably they bore words which could be read.