Talk:John the Baptist (Caravaggio)

The enduring appeal of this John the Baptist lies in its soft, caressing light and velvety rendering of cloth, flesh, and plants. The figure is identifiable as St. John only by virtue of the symbols of Christ displayed in the painting: the ram (sacrificial victim), and the grape-leaves (from whose red juice, akin to the blood of Christ, springs life); otherwise the iconographical subject (the simple, immediately apparent image) appears as a nude youth with an ironic, if not allusive, expression.

So, why is the boy's expression ironic?

My guess is that the irony lies in the way the model seems to step outside the role he's playing, and to be aware of it. This must be a quote from somewhere, but I don't know where - I'll have a look and try to identify it. (My first guess is that it's John Gash or Helen Langdon). PiCo 23:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

A little later: Definitely not John Gash. On further thought, the allusiveness reference is almost certainly to the way the pose alludes to the Michelangelo ignudi in the Sistine Chapel, and that might also account for the "ironic" - the boy is saying, in effect, "Hey, look at me, I'm in the Sistine Chapel!" And since this seems to have been dedicated to the son of Ciriaco Mattei who commissioned it, (also named John-Baptist), it puts Ciriaco's son up there with the Michelangelos. Enough reason to be ironic. PiCo 00:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

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File:Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio - Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness - Google Art Project.jpg scheduled for POTD

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John the Baptist was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. This work, a brooding, "psychologically interiorized" oil-on-canvas portrait of John the Baptist as a young adult, shows him without any of his usual symbolic attributes (except for the cross he holds), and is considered by scholars the most radical portrait of the series. Caravaggio's unusual practice of composing directly on the canvas without any underpainting, incising salient features with the blunt end of his brush handle, or perhaps with a knife, is evident here particularly on John's left leg. This painting is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Painting credit: Caravaggio

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