Artist: Luca Giordano
Date: 1660
Size: 146 x 117 cm
Museum: San Antonio Museum of Art (San Antonio, United States)
Technique: Oil On Canvas
St. John the Baptist was one of the four evangelists who chronicled the life of Jesus in the New Testament of the Holy Bible. Best known as the apostle who baptized Christ, St. John lived his life in the wilderness, rejecting a life of luxury and comfort. He is shown here as a virile young man seated on a rocky slope holding a shell to collect water from a spring, a reference to the future baptism. The slender cross over the shell refers to the future martyrdom of both Christ and John, who was beheaded in his 20s for his teachings about Christ, the Messiah.St. John the Baptist demonstrates some of important characteristics of Roman baroque painting: a preference for realistic images of people drawn from everyday life, dramatically lit by strong contrasts of light and dark, and arranged in a shallow space close to the picture plane so that their gestures seem to burst out of the picture. By using these illusionistic devices, the viewer would feel like a participant in the unfolding drama.Luca Giordano was one of the great painters of the Italian Baroque. Born in Naples, he was one of the many artists lured to Rome to participate in the decoration of splendid palaces being built there.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
