# St John the Baptist [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [SOLIMENA, Francesco]() - Date: 1701-1750 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 83 x 70 cm ## Commentary In the traditional iconography, John the Baptist is represented as a bearded ascetic, rudely dressed in a camel skin and crusted with dirt from the wilderness. Solimena, by contrast, has portrayed him as a handsome young man, clean shaven and well-muscled. The secure the identity, the painter includes the baptist's traditional symbols of a reed cane with a cross at the top, and, in his left hand, a banderole inscribed "Ec. Ag. Dei" \(Ecce Agnus Dei\), "Behold the Lamb of God." The head of a lamb is glimpsed in the shadow. This painting is an example of Solimena's art at the peak of his maturity in the 1720s. ## Related artworks - [Allegory of Reign]() - [Bathsheba Bathing]() - [Battle between Lapiths and Centaurs]() - [Ceiling painting]() - [Dido Receiving Aeneas and Cupid Disguised as Ascanius]() - [Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple]() - [Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple]() - [Fall of Simon Magus \(detail\)]() - [Fall of Simon Magus]() - [Frieze \(detail\)]() - [Frieze \(detail\)]() - [General view of the sacristy]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()