‘St John the Baptist’ was painted by the unknown artist of the Bolognese School in the 17th century. Its size is monumental and can be compared with the human scale. Such monumental canvases were designed to decorate the catholic cathedrals.
According to the New Testament, saint John the Baptist used to live a sheltered life in a desert predicting the future Christ’s coming and pleading the people to reject their sinful ways of living. His name “Baptist” means “the one who baptized Christ”. John used to submerge the Jews coming to him into the Jordan’s water making the immersing spiritual. In doing so he used to show that, as water washes the dirt off the body, the human’s soul is about to be washed off from all the sins and taints. Later on it was called the Sacrament of Baptism.
John the Baptist used to speak openly about the grand people’s taints. He used to condemn with special emphasis the criminal marriage of Galilea’s ruler Herod Antipas with princess Herodias. It evoked king’s great anger. During one of the feasts Herodias’s daughter Salome danced for Herod. The dance was so beautiful that Herod let her ask for any reward. Salome’s mother made her ask for the prophet’s death. The man of God was decapitated.
At the unknown artist’s canvas saint John the Baptist is shown as a young man with soft facial features. Such image was a new interpretation of a well-known subject (previously the saint used to be featured as a skinny bearded man wearing the haircloth and belted with the rough belt). The new image was promoted by the Renaissance principles when the artists started to use the traditional plots for expressing the new ideals. Many of them proclaimed the ideas of humanism. Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting with the same title is one of the spectacular examples. But some principles stayed unchanged, for example, depicting the symbols inherent to John the Baptist only. They can be seen in the work of the Bolognese artist as well. For example, the young man is dressed in haircloth with a red mantle and keeps a long thin cross made of cane.
According to the New Testament, saint John the Baptist used to live a sheltered life in a desert predicting the future Christ’s coming and pleading the people to reject their sinful ways of living. His name “Baptist” means “the one who baptized Christ”. John used to submerge the Jews coming to him into the Jordan’s water making the immersing spiritual. In doing so he used to show that, as water washes the dirt off the body, the human’s soul is about to be washed off from all the sins and taints. Later on it was called the Sacrament of Baptism.
John the Baptist used to speak openly about the grand people’s taints. He used to condemn with special emphasis the criminal marriage of Galilea’s ruler Herod Antipas with princess Herodias. It evoked king’s great anger. During one of the feasts Herodias’s daughter Salome danced for Herod. The dance was so beautiful that Herod let her ask for any reward. Salome’s mother made her ask for the prophet’s death. The man of God was decapitated.
At the unknown artist’s canvas saint John the Baptist is shown as a young man with soft facial features. Such image was a new interpretation of a well-known subject (previously the saint used to be featured as a skinny bearded man wearing the haircloth and belted with the rough belt). The new image was promoted by the Renaissance principles when the artists started to use the traditional plots for expressing the new ideals. Many of them proclaimed the ideas of humanism. Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting with the same title is one of the spectacular examples. But some principles stayed unchanged, for example, depicting the symbols inherent to John the Baptist only. They can be seen in the work of the Bolognese artist as well. For example, the young man is dressed in haircloth with a red mantle and keeps a long thin cross made of cane.
