Saint John the Baptist

Gonzalo Pérez's Saint John the Baptist, painted in 1401 and held in the Louvre, represents the International Gothic style of the Iberian Peninsula at the turn of the fifteenth century. The Baptist — forerunner of Christ who baptized him in the Jordan River and whose beheading by Herod is among the most painted subjects of the era — appears here with his conventional attributes: the lamb of God and the reed cross. Pérez was active in Valencia, then one of the most prosperous and culturally engaged cities of the Spanish kingdoms, with strong connections to the Italian and Flemish traditions that shaped International Gothic. The work demonstrates how Valencian painters synthesized these northern and Italian influences into a distinctive regional style.

Pérez employs a gold ground and the elegant linear contours of International Gothic, with the saint's drapery forming decorative, stylized folds. The figure is elongated and graceful in the manner fashionable across European courts around 1400. Flesh tones are warm and smoothly modeled against the gleaming gold background.