The Birth of John the Baptist

This round panel was not made for a church. It is a birth bowl, a painted dish of a kind Florentine families commissioned to mark a new arrival, carried to the mother with sweets and gifts. The coat of arms on the back ties it to the birth of a boy named Aldighieri della Casa in January 1527. On the front Pontormo painted a birth from scripture, the moment John the Baptist is named, with his mother Elizabeth resting on the bed while her husband Zachary writes down the name. Chosen for a newborn, the subject fit the object exactly. Pontormo, then in his early thirties, was among the most inventive painters in Florence.