St John the Baptist

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St John the Baptist: Leonardo da Vinci

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Leonardo da Vinci Oil Painting - St John the Baptist

Keywords: John, Baptist

Work Overview: Artist Leonardo da Vinci
Year 1513–1516 (?)
Medium Oil on walnut wood
Dimensions 69 cm × 57 cm (27.16 in × 22.44 in)
Location Louvre, Paris

St. John the Baptist is a High Renaissance oil painting on walnut wood by Leonardo da Vinci. Probably completed from 1513 to 1516, it is believed to be his final painting. The original size of the painting was 69 x 57 cm. It is now exhibited at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France.

The piece depicts St. John the Baptist in isolation. Through use of chiaroscuro, the figure appears to emerge from the shadowy background. St. John is dressed in pelts, has long curly hair, and is smiling in an enigmatic manner reminiscent of Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa. He holds a reed cross in his left hand while his right hand points up toward heaven like St Anne in Leonardo's Burlington House Cartoon. According to Zöllner, Leonardo's use of sfumato "conveys the religious content of the picture," and that "the gentle shadows imbue the subject's skin tones with a very soft, delicate appearance, almost androgynous in its effect, which has led to this portrayal being interpreted as an expression of Leonardo's homoerotic leanings."

Kenneth Clark claimed that for Leonardo, St. John represented "the eternal question mark, the enigma of creation", and noted the sense of "uneasiness" that the painting imbues.[2] Barolsky adds that: "Describing Saint John emerging from darkness in almost shockingly immediate relation to the beholder, Leonardo magnifies the very ambiguity between spirit and flesh. The grace of Leonardo's figure, which has a disturbingly erotic charge, nonetheless conveys a spiritual meaning to which Saint John refers when he speaks of the fullness of grace from God."

The dating of St. John the Baptist is disputed.[4] It was seen by Antonio de Beatis in Leonardo's workshop at Clos Lucé;[5] his diary entry giving a terminus ante quem of 17 October 1517.

Traditionally the painting has been considered the artist's last and dated to 1513-16; Leonardo's sfumato technique here being considered to have reached its apogee.[4] Some experts, however, have compared the hand of St. John to a similar work by a pupil in the Codex Atlanticus, dating the commencement of the picture to around 1509.

St. John the Baptist was apparently part of King Francis' collection at Fontainebleu in 1542. In 1625 King Charles I received the painting from Louis XIII in return for a Titian Holy Family and Holbein's Portrait of Erasmus.[4] In 1649 Charles' collection was sold, whereupon the painting entered into the hands of banker Eberhard Jabach.[4] After a spell in the possession of Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661 the piece once again returned to the King of France – Louis XIV. Following the revolution the painting entered the collection at the Louvre where it remains to this day.

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When Leonardo died his possessions were pitifully few. He had three of his paintings, the Mona Lisa, the Virgin and St. Anne and his final painting, that of St. John the Baptist. This painting dates from his final years in Rome, around 1509-1516.

Many people are critical of this work, finding it a disturbing representation of a character normally portrayed as gaunt and fiery, living in a desert and surviving on a diet of locusts and honey. In Leonardo's painting St. John seems almost to be a hermaphrodite. He has a womanish arm bent across his breast, his finger raised towards heaven, and that same enigmatic smile so admired on the face of Mona Lisa, a smile which can be seen in other Leonardo paintings like that of St. Anne. His face is almost faun-like and framed by a glorious cascade of curls. The finger pointed towards heaven was to appear quite often in Leonardo's work (the Burlington House cartoon is another example) and denotes the coming of Christ.

From the encircling darkness emerges this mysterious figure holding a reed cross and wearing an animal skin. An examination of this painting using monochromatic sodium light has revealed both of these items were added later by a different artist. Two suggestions have been made for the lack of a background:

It may have been an attempt to focus on the spiritual side of the topic and the presentation was designed to emphasise the saint's isolation.
Possibly it is the work of another artist and behind the dark shadows there exists a hidden landscape. However, to date no examinations have been able to find concrete evidence to support this suggestion.
Other versions of St. John have also been attributed to Leonardo with the Municipal Museum at Basle having one. Also, in a private collection there is a sketch in which Bacchus is depicted in a state of sexual arousal. His right hand is upraised with the pointing finger, the angle of the head and facial expression very similar to that of St. John the Baptist.

Many of Leonardo's pupils were to copy St. John the Baptist and their work appears in various collections. Other paintings mentioned in this article which are on a similar theme and presently thought to be the work of Leonardo may later prove to be those of other artists. Typical of Leonardo's paintings, these will be heavily debated especially as so many copies of his original were done by students.

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This image of St John the Baptist was the last painting that Leonardo produced, and it was in his possession when he died. It is one of only a few that we can be absolutely certain the master painted.

Leonardo's version is strikingly different to other paintings of the Saint, who is normally portrayed as gaunt, and scraping a living in the desert on locusts and honey. It captures four recurring themes of Leonardo's figures; an enigmatic smile, flowing curly hair, and a finger pointing to heaven, all defined by dense shadows.

Many copies of this painting have been made, particularly by Leonardo's pupils.

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