The repentant St. John Chrysostomos

Baldung's Repentant Saint John Chrysostom from 1536 depicts the Church Father in the extreme penitential mode—naked in a wild landscape, doing penance on all fours—that this particular saint's legend described as his condition during his years of hermit isolation. Chrysostom, whose name means 'golden mouth,' was celebrated as the greatest preacher of the early church, and his period of penitential humility before his reinstatement as Archbishop of Constantinople was a subject that combined clerical hagiography with the dramatic natural settings Baldung favored for penitential subjects. The 1536 date places this in his mature Strasbourg period, when his workshop was producing both Catholic devotional works and secular subjects for a mixed confessional market as Strasbourg navigated the transition to a Lutheran city.

The penitent figure is rendered with Baldung's characteristic attention to the body's physicality, set within a detailed forest landscape.