Saint John the Baptist

This Saint John the Baptist by Gaspar de Crayer, dated 1655 and in the Prado, was painted as a companion to the same collection's Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Augustine of the same date, forming a group of three single saints that may have originated as elements of a larger ensemble or as a set of devotional figures for a private chapel. Saint John the Baptist was among the most universally venerated saints of the Catholic world: at once the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, the last to prepare the way before Christ, and the first martyr of the New Testament era. In Baroque painting the adult Baptist was typically shown in the desert, his lean figure dressed in camel hair, holding a cross-staff and accompanied by a lamb — the Agnus Dei he proclaimed at the Jordan. Crayer's treatment belongs to the dignified, contemplative register of his late devotional work rather than the more dramatic narrative compositions of his earlier career.

The single-figure devotional format allowed Crayer to concentrate his technical resources entirely on one figure, and the result shows his mature Baroque command of light, surface, and colour. The Baptist's camel-hair garment and staff are rendered with the same warm, assured touch as the flesh of face and hands. The background is loosely indicated — warm darks with atmospheric depth — appropriate to the desert setting.