The icon features St. John the Forerunner, the baptizer of Jesus Christ. The figure of the prophet is painted against a golden background and surrounded by border scenes (small compositions telling the saint’s life story).

The centerpiece features a full-length depiction of John the Forerunner. His long hair comes down to his shoulders, his olive-colour wings are wide open. Their design is complemented by light-ocher feathers and gold leaf hatchings. In his left hand the saint holds a scroll and a platter with a severed head as a reminder of his martyr’s death. John the Forerunner is depicted wearing a dark green hair shirt (a coarse garb made of wool). It is meant to emphasize John’s ascetic lifestyle. His left shoulder is draped with a green-colour himation (a cloak made of woolen cloth and worn as an outer garment).

The lower part of the centerpiece features light-ocher hills with white-colour ledges. They are a special landscape element in icon painting: rock-mount ledges that rise to the sky symbolizing spiritual ascent. The figure of the saint is surrounded by olive-coloured trees, whose crowns and trunks are adorned with gold.

The centerpiece is surrounded by 20 border scenes. John the Forerunner lived in the 1st century; the story of his birth is told in the Gospel of Luke. The icon’s border scenes feature landmark events of the saint’s life and his deeds: from his birth to the moment, when he baptized Jesus Christ and was executed. John’s parents – priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth – were righteous people. They were childless for a long time, which was considered a sign of God’s disfavour in those years.

When Zechariah and his wife were already well advanced in years, an angel appeared to the priest and told him that the spouses’ prayers had been heard. Your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John, he said. But Zechariah did not believe the voice of the angel, for which he was punished by dumbness until the prophecy came true. When their son was born, Elizabeth asked her husband what to call him, Zachariah wrote on a tablet the name John and was immediately able to speak again. This story is presented in the first few border scenes.

St. John lived an ascetic life in the desert for a long time, wore a coarse hair shirt and observed a strict fast. At the age of 30, he started preaching in Judea urging sinners to repent. He baptized people with water, publicly criticized Herod, the ruler of Galilee. John was sent to jail. At the behest of the Jewish queen Herodias and her daughter Salome, he was beheaded and his head was brought to the queen on a platter during a feast.