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Saint John the Baptist and faithful
Painter from Lombardyaround 1400 - 1420
Museo Diocesano Milano
Milano, Italy
Details
- Title: Saint John the Baptist and faithful
- Creator Lifespan: 1400 - 1420
- Creator Nationality: Italian
- Creator Gender: Male
- Date: around 1400 - 1420
- Provenance: Alberto Crespi Collection
- Physical Dimensions: w23.7 x h76 cm
- Painter: Painter from Lombardy
- Description: This piece is part of a group of four panels, similar in size, style, and embossing, which were the side panels of a dismembered polyptych, the other parts of which are unknown. It would have been inserted into an ornate frame, as can be deduced by the uneven top edge of the paintings. One can assume that the Virgin and Child were at the center of the altarpiece. John the Baptist, who is pointing at a scroll with an inscription that alludes to the Savior, and St. Anthony Abbot with his monastic robes and tau-shaped stick are on the right. On the left are probably St. Ambrose, wearing his bishop’s vestments and holding the scourge, symbol of his struggle against the Arians, and St. Francis of Assisi, with the signs of the stigmata. The presence of the bishop could mean that the work came from a church in the diocese of Milan. The altarpiece was commissioned by a layman, represented kneeling at the foot of St. John the Baptist. He has the hairstyle and clothes of the time of the Duchy of Gian Galeazzo Visconti. The artist’s attempt to individualize the figures, the linearity of the edges of the garments, the elongation of the figures, and the late Gothic elegance of the panels place them in the eclectic atmosphere of early fifteenth-century Lombardy. The embossing on the gold background, with a lozenge motif that frames corollas of stylized flowers, is in line with the tradition of Lombardy.
- Type: painting
- Rights: © Archivio fotografico Museo Diocesano, Milano
- Medium: tempera on wood
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