Saint John the Baptist

This picture is painted on stone. Around 1603 to 1606 Cesari worked in oil on a slab of slate only about 33 by 26 centimetres, a support prized for small, precious cabinet pictures. The young Baptist sits in the wilderness on an animal skin, wrapped in a red cloak, with a thin cross-shaped staff in his left hand. With his right he holds out a small bowl to catch water spilling from the rock, and his lamb bends to drink from the same stream. A Borghese inventory of 1693 described it in almost those words, as Saint John taking water from a rock, with a lamb. An earlier family list gave it to Paolo Guidotti, another painter of the day, and one modern scholar has proposed Cesari's brother Bernardino. The museum accepts it as Giuseppe's own. It hangs in the gallery's chapel.