The Baptism of Christ

This relief, shaped to fit into the space below half of an arch, is from a high altar retable commissioned in 1515 for the Church of St. John in Moosburg. It was removed in 1683 to make way for a new altarpiece. The relief was located at the top of the inner side of the left wing panel. In the corresponding position on the right was a relief showing St. John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness, now in the Diocesan Museum in Freising. As in the seated Man of Sorrows (no. 50), the figure of Christ in this baptism scene is athletically built. Leinberger, one of the most inventive sculptors in southern Germany, had presumably been exposed to Italian Renaissance art. This supposition is reinforced by the approach taken here to the medium of the relief, with its harmonious visual space enclosed by an atmospheric backdrop of cloud.