Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your gallerySaint John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Two Disciples
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Look at John’s raised finger behind the bars and the follower hiding his face in his cloak, then find the chained leopard lying on the pavement.
Herod has locked John in a tower, and two of his followers come to the barred window to hear him. Giovanni di Paolo reuses this pale building, its tiled pavement and its archway in the beheading scene; the Art Institute of Chicago notes that repeated settings, colors and patterns keep the long story easy to follow.
Tempera on panel · 68.3 × 40 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Renaissance · Late Gothic and Early Renaissance
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- Saint John the Baptist in Prison Visited by Two Disciples
- Artist
- Giovanni di Paolo (Italian, 1398–1482)
- Date
- 1455–60
- Medium
- Tempera on panel
- Dimensions
- 68.3 × 40 cm (26 7/8 × 15 3/4 in.); Framed: 79.6 × 51.5 × 7.7 cm (31 3/8 × 20 1/4 × 3 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
- 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.