San Giovanni Battista

When Filippino Lippi painted this John the Baptist in the late 1490s, Florence was under the sway of the friar Girolamo Savonarola, who preached against luxury and had the city heaping mirrors, wigs and paintings onto public bonfires. The panel was made for the chapel of Francesco Valori, one of Savonarola's most powerful backers, in the church of San Procolo. You can feel that climate in the saint himself. There is nothing sweet or decorative here. John is gaunt to the point of starvation, his ribs and sinews showing, his skin drained to a pale grey, his eyes fixed with the fervour of a man who has chosen the desert. Filippino set him in a shallow stone niche, so that he reads almost like a carved statue thinned down to bone.