The Church of St. John the Evangelist and Apostle sits in the midst of the Plaza Square development, and is an interesting church in its own right, dating back to the years before the Civil War.  It is one of the oldest churches in St. Louis.  It was renovated, not always successfully, in the Twentieth Century.  All of those vertical bricks cannot be original, and a historic photo proves there was once a stone or terracotta lintel in their place.

But there is a wonderful surprise inside this beautiful church; a giant reproduction Raphael’s Transfiguration, from 1520.  It was one of Raphael’s final paintings, and its replica commands the interior of the apse.

Here’s a bad picture I took of the original painting, now in the Vatican Picture Gallery in Rome.