Saint John the Baptist Entering the Wilderness
Giovanni di Paolo (Italian, 1398–1482)
1455–60
- Medium
- Tempera on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 68.5 × 36.2 cm (27 × 14 1/4 in.); Framed: 79.4 × 47.7 × 8 cm (31 1/4 × 18 3/4 × 3 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This series of panels illustrates scenes from the life of Saint John the Baptist, a prophet who foretold Jesus’s arrival as the Christian savior. The Art Institute’s collection includes six panels that were originally part of a group of 12 that possibly formed the doors of a reliquary shrine to the saint.
The narrative begins as John leaves civilization, entering the wilderness to become a hermit. In a following scene, John wears a hair shirt, a coarse undergarment symbolizing his ascetic life, as he announces that Jesus is the savior prophesied as the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. Subsequent panels show John’s imprisonment and violent execution at the hands of Herod, ruler of Galilee. Giovanni di Paolo related the Baptist’s complex biography with expressive figures represented multiple times to indicate their movement through highly imaginative and stylized settings.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
