Saint John the Baptist

Giovanni di Paolo's Saint John the Baptist at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, painted around 1437, presents the Precursor with his traditional attributes in the angular, visionary style that distinguishes this Sienese master. Giovanni di Paolo's intensely personal vision transforms even conventional devotional subjects into distinctive artistic statements. Giovanni di Paolo was among the most individual and poetic painters of fifteenth-century Siena, developing a highly personal style that combined the mystical intensity of the Sienese tradition with a love of decorative color and spatial fantasy quite unlike anything in contemporary Florentine painting.

The Baptist's figure displays Giovanni di Paolo's angular drawing and vivid palette, the camel-hair garment and wilderness attributes rendered with the expressive intensity that defines his idiosyncratic contribution to Sienese painting.