Saint John the Baptist

This striking half-naked figure is Saint John the Baptist. He comes from the polyptych which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. The saint’s stance, one leg bent and hip curved out to the side, gives him a sense of solidity. We can see the sinews and veins of John’s hands and feet, his long bony toes and ankles, and the individual hairs of his hair and on the inside of the skin laced around him; this level of naturalistic detail is more characteristic of Netherlandish painters, like Rogier van der Weyden, than of Crivelli‘s fellow Italian artists. The smooth gold of his body and the roughness of the animal skin he wears contrast with the deep, crisp folds of the lavish pink and green fabric wrapped around him.Unlike the other saints made for the main section of this altarpiece, John stands not on a marble parapet but in a wilderness of pink rocks scattered with bare trees. A clear stream flows along the front of the painting, and reeds sprout up along the water’s edge. Through the translucent water we can see pebbles scattered on the river bed. The barren landscape and the saint’s apron allude to the years John spent as a hermit in the desert, punishing his body with uncomfortable clothes and poor food to bring him closer to God. John is said to have worn a camel skin – hair side towards his flesh so that it was scratchy and uncomfortable – and to have foraged for food, eating wild honey and locusts.The stream is the River Jordan where John baptised the people of Judea and Jerusalem, Jesus among them. Parts of the near bank are visible at the bottom of the painting, making us feel that we are only separated from John by the river. A small bird, its back turned to us, perches on a branch to John’s right. It is perhaps a goldfinch, a symbol of Christ’s passion. An almost identical bird appears in another painting by Crivelli, The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele Ferretti. Perhaps Crivelli kept a model book with drawings of birds and animals, such as we know other fifteenth-century artists used.In a detail typical of Crivelli, the saint gazes downwards, so that we see only the top of his head and his foreshortened features. He points at the scroll which curls from his right hand, on which is written: Ecce Agnus Dei, Ecce Qui. Theses are the first words of the phrase with which John recognised Christ as the Messiah when he baptised him: ’Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.'