Saint John the Baptist

Around 1506 Leonardo da Vinci was moving between Florence and Milan, and his workshop was turning out versions of his inventions almost as fast as he could devise them. This Saint John the Baptist comes from that world. Leonardo's own painting of the subject, now in the Louvre, shows the saint stepping out of darkness, smiling, one finger raised toward heaven, and it was copied and reworked many times by the hands around him. This panel is one of those workshop versions rather than the master's own. Painted in oil on poplar, it keeps the soft modelling and the raised finger that identify the figure as John, the preacher who announced the coming of Christ.