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Follow his raised hand and the long reed cross, then look down at the lamb grazing beside him in the lower right.
The young Saint John the Baptist sits as a hermit in the wild, with a reed cross, a pointing hand and a lamb that mark him as the prophet of Christ, the Lamb of God. Once given to an unknown painter of Seville, the canvas is now recognized as the young Velázquez’s work. The Art Institute thinks its idealized figure followed his short visit to Madrid in 1622, where he saw the royal collection’s Italian paintings.
Oil on canvas · 175.3 × 152.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Baroque
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness
- Artist
- Diego Velázquez (Spanish, 1599–1660)
- Date
- c. 1622
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 175.3 × 152.5 cm (69 × 60 in.); Framed: 202.3 × 184.2 × 9.2 cm (79 5/8 × 72 1/2 × 3 5/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Barbara Deering Danielson
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.