Johannes der Täufer

Leonardo painted this around 1513 to 1516, near the very end of his life, and many think it was the last picture he finished. He kept it with him when King Francis I invited him to France in 1516, so it travelled in his own baggage rather than hanging in some patron's chapel. John the Baptist emerges out of near-total darkness, lit as if a candle sat just off to one side, and he smiles in a way that has unsettled viewers for centuries. One hand holds a thin reed cross, the other points straight up. That pointing finger is the whole picture. It is the gesture John was known for, directing you past himself to something higher. There is no landscape, no sky, no crowd, just the figure and the shadow he seems to be dissolving back into.