Spanish school; early 17th century.

Spanish school; early seventeenth century.
"Saint John the Baptist".
Oil on copper.
It has frame of the nineteenth century.
Measurements: 22 x 18 cm; 51 x 46 cm (frame).
Small devotional copper intended for an altar or private chapel, representing St. John in the desert. The artist portrays him as a young shepherd of classicist aspect, summarily dressed with a wide incarnate mantle. The figure is in the foreground, seated next to the trees, facing a panoramic landscape. Despite the fact that he is depicted beardless, when he usually has long and shaggy beards, there are several attributes that allow us to identify the figure as St. John the Baptist. In the first place, the clothes, because under the red cloak we can see a camel skin. In addition, the character holds in his hand a wide rod, topped in the form of a cross. The lamb also appears, symbol of Christ and his sacrifice in favor of humanity, a usual attribute of St. John the Baptist. The saint, for his part, adopts a gesture of divine inspiration. The artist is probably inspired by classical images of the "Good Shepherd", bucolic figures of young shepherds caring for their livestock that were adopted at the beginning of Christianity as symbolic figures of Jesus caring for his faithful. This inspiration from classical sources could explain the youthful and beardless appearance of St. John.
The Gospels say of John the Baptist that he was the son of the priest Zechariah and Elizabeth, cousin of the Virgin Mary. He retired very young to the desert of Judea to lead an ascetic life and preach penance, and recognized in Jesus, who was baptized by him, the Messiah announced by the prophets. A year after the baptism of Christ, in the year 29, John was arrested and imprisoned by the tetrarch of Galilee Herod Antipas, whose marriage to Herodias, his niece and sister-in-law, he had dared to censure. Finally, St. John was beheaded, and his head given to Salome as a reward for his beautiful dances. This saint appears in Christian art with two different aspects: as a child, a playmate of Jesus, and as an adult, an ascetic preacher. The adult St. John that we see here appears dressed in oriental art with a camel skin sackcloth, which in the West was replaced with a sheepskin that leaves his arms, legs and part of his torso bare. The red cloak he wears at times, as well as in the scene of his intercession at the Last Judgment, alludes to his martyrdom. In Byzantine art he is depicted as a large-winged angel, with his severed head on a tray which he holds in his hands. However, his attributes in Western art are very different. The most frequent is a lamb, which alludes to Jesus Christ, and he often carries a cross of reeds with a phylactery with the inscription "Ecce Agnus Dei".