Saint John the Baptist between Saint Augustine and the Prophet Elijah

The small figures in the landscape behind the saints explain the whole painting. Two friars in Carmelite habit are drinking at a spring, and that spring is the fountain of Elijah on Mount Carmel. The Carmelites claimed the prophet as their founder, which is why the bearded man on the right is probably Elijah, printed in the catalogues with a question mark to this day. The canvas was painted in 1514 for Santa Maria delle Grazie at Novellara, near Reggio Emilia, a Carmelite church the Gonzaga of that town had founded in 1477. When the church was suppressed in 1773 the picture moved to the collegiate church of Santo Stefano, and the Brera bought it in 1900. The Baptist stands the way Mantegna's Risen Christ stands in a print made in Mantua a generation earlier. A cleaning in 2016 took off an ambered varnish and gave back the cold greys underneath.