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ANDRÉ DURAND Twenty-First Century Paintings
The eagle, the magnificent bird of prey, was used as the emblem of St. John, because in his Gospel St. John dwells particularly upon the Divinity of the Redeemer and contemplates with the unflinching eye of an eagle the highest truths. It was a popular belief among the ancients that the eagle could renew its youth by plunging three times into a spring of pure water, briefly alluded to by David: Thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s (Psalm 102:5), hence the ancient Christians, and later the medieval symbolists, used the eagle as a sign of baptism, the well-spring of salvation, in whose water the neophyte was dipped three times, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in order to wash from his soul the old man of sin and put on the youth of a child of light.