John the Baptist among the saints Peter, Mark, Jerome and Paul

Cima da Conegliano painted this sacra conversazione around 1495, at the height of his productive period in Venice, where he had established himself as a leading altarpiece painter second only to Giovanni Bellini. The grouping of John the Baptist with Peter, Mark, Jerome, and Paul follows the Venetian convention of placing saints from different eras in timeless dialogue before a landscape backdrop — a format Cima absorbed directly from Bellini but inflected with his own cooler, more crystalline light. The specificity of the saints chosen likely reflects the patron's dedicatory preferences or the particular church for which the work was commissioned in the Veneto.

Cima's characteristic hard-edged clarity distinguishes the figures from Bellini's softer modeling. The landscape behind the saints — rocky outcrops and a distant town — is detailed with almost Flemish precision. Drapery falls in regular, sculptural folds, and the palette emphasizes cool blues and greens over Bellini's warmer golds.