Panel with the Birth of St. John the Baptist from Retable

Domingo Ram's Panel with the Birth of Saint John the Baptist from a Retable, around 1450 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts the domestic scene of John's birth to the elderly Elizabeth and Zechariah — a narrative episode from the Gospel of Luke that gave painters opportunity to render convincing interior space and everyday human activity within a sacred context. The birthing chamber scene was well established in Northern European painting, and Spanish retable painters incorporated these Northern narrative conventions into their multi-panel devotional programs.

Tempera on panel with an architectural interior setting rendered with limited but functional perspective recession. The composition organizes multiple figures around the newborn John — midwives, the reclining Elizabeth, Zechariah writing the infant's name.