The Naming of Saint John the Baptist

Fra Angelico's Naming of Saint John the Baptist, painted around 1450 for the Museum of San Marco, depicts the moment when Zechariah, struck mute for his disbelief, writes his son's name on a tablet. This infancy narrative of the Baptist was an important complement to the story of Christ's birth in medieval devotional art. Fra Angelico — born Guido di Pietro, known in religion as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole — was a Dominican friar whose painting practice was inseparable from his spiritual vocation. Working primarily for his own order and for Florentine civic and private patrons, he created some of the most luminous and spiritually powerful images in the history of European art.

The intimate domestic scene is rendered with Fra Angelico's characteristic clarity and luminous color, the interior setting painted in careful perspective with figures arranged to convey the miracle of speech restored at the naming.