Martino Piazza, Saint John the Baptist in the Desert

In this unusual scene, Saint John the Baptist crouches in a dark rocky grotto beside a spring from which he collects water. His slender cross, faintly painted in gold, can just be seen in the shadows behind him. At the back of the grotto are two openings – a rough window and a door – through which a rural landscape stretches to distant blue mountains. Plants grow from the earth beside the Baptist’s feet, nourished by the pool of spring water.

The saint is depicted as a slender, elfin young man with spirals of glossy curls highlighted with fine lines like spun gold. Although he faces towards the source of the water, his right eye pivots strangely towards us. The expression on his face is hard to read. His body is only partly concealed by loosely knotted crimson drapery, which has fallen from his shoulders as he stoops to fill his shallow bowl with water from the spout. Two drips of water have splashed over the edge of the bowl and and roll like tears down the outside.

The painting is signed with a monogram: the letters MPP are surmounted by a T; a small drop hangs from each end of the cross-bar of the T, and its stem passes between a pair of wings. This is thought to be the monogram of Martino Piazza from Lodi, near Milan. Martino Piazza worked with his brother Albertino and it is often difficult to tell their work apart. However, the monogrammed paintings, such as The Nativity in the Ambrosiana, Milan, and the National Gallery’s Saint John the Baptist are generally thought to be by Martino.

The delicate, graceful physique of the Baptist, the atmospheric effects in the mountainous landscape and the dramatic contrasts of light and dark, known as chiaroscuro, show the influence of the Milanese works of Leonardo da Vinci and his followers. The rocky setting with apertures opening onto a mountainous landscape is reminiscent of the Saint Jerome by Leonardo in the Vatican Museums. Influences from artists from north of the Alps can also be detected in the luminous landscape, which is depicted with minute attention to naturalistic detail.