Ecce Agnus Dei

Ecce Agnus Dei, at the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade, depicts Saint John the Baptist presenting the Lamb of God—the moment from the Gospel of John when the Baptist sees Christ and declares 'Behold the Lamb of God'—a subject of central importance to the Baptist's iconography. Juan de Flandes's panel, painted around 1496, belongs to the series dedicated to John the Baptist that the Flemish master created for the Spanish court. Belgrade's National Museum holds this as a rare major example of Flemish early Renaissance painting in the Balkans.

John the Baptist is shown with his camel-hair garment and the lamb—white, small, and delicate—that he holds or gestures toward as the symbol of Christ's sacrificial identity. Juan de Flandes renders the lamb with the precise material attention Flemish painters brought to animals, its wool described with individual strokes that create texture rather than the undifferentiated smoothness of a symbol.