St John the Baptist
The original, as its museum records it
Every line above is reproduced from the holding institution’s own catalogue entry, which is linked. Where their title, date or attribution differs from ours, theirs is the one printed here.
The file this print is made from
Sizes
About this painting
He embraces a ram, not the lamb his name calls for — the same animal that once stood in for Isaac. Grapevine leaves above him mark Christ's blood, the sacrifice the ram foreshadows. A scrap of animal hide beneath the drapery is the one detail still tying this reclining, smiling youth to John the Baptist.
Ciriaco Mattei commissioned the canvas in 1602 for his private rooms, the subject chosen for his eldest son's name-saint, Giovanni Battista. Shannon Pritchard traces the pose to the Sistine nude beside Michelangelo's Sacrifice of Noah, where the animal being sacrificed is already a ram.
Sources: Shannon Pritchard, "Caravaggio's Capitoline Saint John: An Emblematic Image of Divine Love," Athanor XXIII (2004) · Sergio Rossi, "Caravaggio e i Mattei," About Art Online, drawing on archival research by Laura Testa · Musei Capitolini, Rome, 'Restauro del San Giovanni Battista di Caravaggio'.
And the child grew and was strengthened in spirit: and was in the deserts until the day of his manifestation to Israel.
Luke 1:80 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 7,795 px master of the original. The whole image is printed — never cropped to fit the sheet — so every sheet carries an archival margin, and the dimensions and resolution listed above are the ones you receive.