Full title | Saint John the Baptist |
---|---|
Artist | Lorenzo Costa |
Artist dates | 1460 - 1535 |
Group | The High Altarpiece from San Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza |
Date made | 1505 |
Medium and support | Oil on canvas, transferred from wood |
Dimensions | 55.2 x 57.1 cm |
Inscription summary | Signed; Dated and inscribed |
Acquisition credit | Bought, 1859 |
Inventory number | NG629.5 |
Location | Not on display |
Collection | Main Collection |
Saint John the Baptist sits on a stone ledge, his attribute of a reed cross leaning against his shoulder. John was a hermit and prophet who lived in the wilderness, baptising people in the river Jordan and preaching repentance of sins. The scroll in his right hand bears a Latin inscription: ECCE AGNUS DEI (‘Behold the Lamb of God’). These are the words the saint spoke when he baptised Christ and recognised him as the Messiah.
This painting was part of the upper tier of a large, multi-panelled altarpiece made for the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza, other parts of which are also in the National Gallery’s collection. The Virgin and Child appeared enthroned at the centre of the altarpiece; Saint John would originally have been looking at and gesturing to the infant Christ. A painting of Saint John the Evangelist appeared on the other side of The Virgin and Child.
Saint John the Baptist sits on a stone ledge, his attribute of a reed cross leaning against his shoulder. John was a hermit and prophet who lived in the wilderness, baptising people in the river Jordan and preaching repentance of sins. The scroll in his right hand bears a Latin inscription: ECCE AGNUS DEI (‘Behold the Lamb of God’). These are the words the saint spoke when he baptised Christ and recognised him as the Messiah.
This painting was part of the upper tier of a large, multi-panelled altarpiece made for the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza, other parts of which are also in the National Gallery’s collection. The Virgin and Child appeared enthroned at the centre of the altarpiece; Saint John would originally have been looking at and gesturing to the infant Christ. A painting of Saint John the Evangelist appeared on the other side of The Virgin and Child.
The two Saints John were probably somewhat lower than the crowning panel, which showed the dead Christ supported by angels. This panel was described in a letter of 1770, but was perhaps separated from the rest of the altarpiece soon after – it was not included in an description published in 1780, when the polyptych was in the Hercolani collection. The top panel can probably be identified with a Dead Christ that was by the 1880s in the collection of the Glasgow businessman and Liberal MP William Graham. It was bought at his sale by Monsignor Robert H. Benson, a writer and priest (firstly Anglican and then Catholic), but we do not know where it is now.
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The High Altarpiece from San Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza
These five paintings were once part of a large multi-panel altarpiece, or polyptych, made for the high altar of the Oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. It was originally topped by a horizontal panel, now lost, showing the dead Christ supported by angels.
Although the altarpiece has been dismembered and its original frame – an important part of the ensemble – is lost, we can tell how it would have been arranged by comparison with existing polyptychs and designs for them, and from the paintings themselves. The Virgin and Child evidently appeared in an arched niche: the dark curved areas to either side of the Virgin’s head would have been covered by the frame. They were flanked by Saints Peter and Philip in the lower register, with Saints John the Evangelist and John the Baptist above.
Lorenzo Costa has signed and dated the central panel in Latin, making it look like an inscription at the top of the door frame: LAURENTIUS COSTA F[ECIT] 1505.
These five paintings – The Virgin and Child, Saint Peter, Saint Philip, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint John the Baptist – were once part of a large polyptych made for the high altar of the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. It was originally topped by a horizontal panel, now lost, showing the dead Christ supported by angels. In the nineteenth century, the paintings were transferred to canvas and were probably reduced in size at the same time.
Although the altarpiece has been dismembered and its original frame – an important part of the ensemble – is lost, we can tell how it would have been arranged by comparison with existing polyptychs and designs for them, and from the paintings themselves. The Virgin and Child evidently appeared in an arched niche: the dark curved areas to either side of the Virgin’s head would have been covered by the frame. They were flanked by Saints Peter and Philip in the lower register, with Saints John the Evangelist and John the Baptist above. Lorenzo Costa has signed and dated the central panel in Latin, making it look like an inscription at the top of the door frame: LAURENTIUS COSTA F[ECIT] 1505.
Costa was one of the leading figures of the Ferrarese school. He trained with Ercole de‘ Roberti, and perhaps went with him to Bologna in the early 1480s. It seems unlikely that it was Costa who decided on the polyptych format – since the early 1490s, all his altarpieces had shown figures in a single panel rather than in separate ones. Even here the elements are linked by the elaborate, if improbable, plinth on which the Virgin’s throne sits. It spills over into the side panels: you can see the steps leading up to it in the panels of Saints Peter and Philip. The landscape behind the Virgin would also have appeared to run behind these two saints, creating an illusion of continuous space, even though the figures were divided by the frame. Perhaps the patron requested a polyptych, maybe with a specific model in mind. Indeed the frame may have been commissioned in advance, as was the case with the High Altarpiece, S. Alessandro, Brescia.
Unfortunately we know nothing about the commissioning of this altarpiece. The oratory of S. Pietro belonged to the confraternity of S. Maria delle Grazie, which had been founded in around 1420 under the patronage of the Dominicans of S. Andrea in Vineis, Faenza. It promoted the cult of an image of the Virgin that recorded her miraculous appearance in the city in 1412, which was thought to have brought an end to the plague in the city. The oratory stood on the same square as S. Andrea, in the area occupied today by Via Giuseppe Ugonia. It was abandoned in the eighteenth century and a new oratory built behind the cathedral. We know very little about the decoration of the old oratory: the sixteenth-century documentation of the confraternity is lost, and the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents tell us nothing relevant.
The year 1505 was an especially busy one for Costa: he painted this altarpiece, a Marriage of the Virgin for the church of SS. Annunziata (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna) and was also working on the Allegory of the Court of Isabella d’Este (Louvre, Paris). Elements of the Bolognese altarpiece are very similar to our painting, especially the facial type of the Virgin and the soft landscape with its delicate hues, gentle hills and fantastic distant buildings.





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