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 points up, and the Louvre says what the gesture is for: this is a light that must vanish before the true light of Christ. The Baptist's whole office, in one finger.
The pelt is not the camel hair of the Gospels. It is spotted — panther, leopard or lynx — a skin worn by Bacchus, a pagan god sometimes read as a figure of Christ before Christ.
The Louvre calls the rest a profound night; the light that lifts him is not his. Leonardo kept the panel by him until he died in 1519, still working on it.
Sources: Musée du Louvre, 'Saint Jean-Baptiste', INV 775. · the raised index finger, inviting the viewer to turn to God · the Baptist's traditional attribute is camel skin — the convention this picture departs from · John 1:8, Douay-Rheims (Challoner).
He said: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaias.
John 1:23 · Douay-Rheims (Challoner), from the project’s own corpus at data/bible_drc.js
Printed on demand. Public-domain masterwork, reproduced from a 14,481 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.