Saint John the Baptist and a Donor

Diego de la Cruz, who was active in Burgos and the surrounding region of Old Castile, producing works that combined Netherlandish technique with Castilian devotional intensity, created this work around 1480, now in Madrid's Museo del Prado. The depiction of saints was fundamental to the devotional culture of the fifteenth century, with each saint's iconographic attributes carefully codified to ensure proper identification.

The figure's identifying attributes are rendered with iconographic precision, while subtle variations in pose, expression, and drapery treatment distinguish this depiction from workshop standard formulas.