John the Baptist (Leonardo da Vinci)

John the Baptist
Leonardo da Vinci , 1513-1516
oil on wood
69 × 57 cm
Louvre, Paris

John the Baptist ( Italian San Giovanni Battista , French Saint Jean Baptiste ) is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). It is dated around 1513 to 1516 and is in the holdings of the Louvre in Paris.

The work

The work shows John the Baptist as a hermit in fur robe with a cross staff in his left hand, while his right hand points to heaven. The gesture underscores the importance of baptism, embodied by John the Baptist.

John the Baptist , dated 1510–1520, Gian Giacomo Caprotti , Pinacoteca Ambrosiana , Milan

The depiction of John is androgynous , it shows female and male body features. The type of representation has been taken up again by later painters, especially the High Renaissance and Mannerism . It is possible, however, that the saints' attributes of fur and cross were added later by another painter. As early as the 1510s, Leonardo student Gian Giacomo Caprotti made a version of the picture that shows the saint without a cross staff.

history

The dating of the picture points to a creation during Leonardo's Roman times. From 1513 to 1515 da Vinci was in the service of the Vatican . It is believed that the image was commissioned by Pope Leo X (1475–1521; born Giovanni de ' Medici in Florence ) in honor of the patron saint of the city of Florence.

The picture is probably Leonardo's last oil painting . He probably suffered from the effects of a stroke , a right-sided hemiparesis, in the last years of his life . Leonardo was able to continue making drawings and sketches because he was left-handed and drew with his left hand, but later dated paintings are not known.

Like most of the pictures, drawings and manuscripts belonging to Leonardo da Vinci, the painting was kept in his villa near Vaprio d'Adda by his student and heir Francesco Melzi (around 1491/92 - around 1570) after his death . His son Orazio Melzi inherited the estate in 1570. The works were sold and the valuable material was scattered around the world.

Around 1625 "John the Baptist" came into the possession of the English King Charles I , who exchanged the picture for two paintings by the French King Louis XIII. received. In 1661 the work came back into the possession of the French royal family through an acquisition by Louis XIV . When the art treasures of the king and the nobility were brought together in the course of the French Revolution , “John the Baptist” was also transferred to the Musée du Louvre.

literature

• Martin Kemp : Leonardo . C. H. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56821-3
• Charles Nicholl : Leonardo da Vinci - The biography . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-10-052405-8
• Carlo Pedretti : Leonardo; a study in chronology and style . University of California Press, Berkeley 1973, ISBN 0-520-02420-6

Web links

Commons : John the Baptist by Leonardo da Vinci  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• John the Baptist on the Musée du Louvre website (French), accessed April 17, 2011
• John the Baptist in the Base Joconde of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
• John the Baptist (Leonardo da Vinci) at Zeno.org .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Louvre
2. ↑ ^{a b} Joconde
3. ↑ Alexander Kafetzopoulos: To what extent did Leonardo da Vinci use his scientific research for his art and what consequences did this have for his works? GRIN Verlag, 2012.
4. ↑ Pedretti, p. 163 ff.
5. ↑ Nicholl, p. 587
6. ↑ Nicholl, p. 600