Saint John the Baptist

Look at the top of the pillar the Baptist stands behind. A rod juts out from its capital, hung with rings that carry strings of red coral and crystal beads, and the rod runs off the edge of the panel. It was never meant to stop there. Cossa painted this in Bologna in the early 1470s as the right-hand figure of an altarpiece for a chapel in San Petronio, and the coral continued across the panel that stood beside it, a Saint Vincent Ferrer that hangs today in the National Gallery in London. Coral was hung near children as a guard against harm, which is why it turns up strung across sacred pictures in northern Italy. The rest of the scene is invented rock, arches and spires of stone with a lizard at the saint's feet, and a scroll reading that he is the voice crying in the wilderness.