Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness

Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness (c. 1516–17) at the Uffizi, painted with considerable workshop assistance, depicts the prophet as a muscular, youthful figure in a landscape derived from Michelangelo's ignudi. By this late Roman period, Raphael was designing rather than executing many of his smaller works, and his assistants — particularly Giulio Romano — were responsible for much of the painted surface. The image of John in the wilderness combines the classicizing beauty of Raphael's mature style with the proto-Baroque muscularity that his workshop, particularly Giulio, would develop further in the Mannerist era. The work demonstrates how Raphael's studio became a training ground for the next generation of Italian painters.

The Michelangelesque muscular figure set against a landscape backdrop demonstrates Raphael's late synthesis of sculptural form with Venetian-influenced atmospheric color.