Saint John the Baptist Entering the Wilderness1455–60
The young John the Baptist leaves his home through a city gate at the lower left and reappears higher up, climbing a winding path into fantastical, folded mountains, so that one panel tells a whole journey. More about this work
About this work
The young John the Baptist leaves his home through a city gate at the lower left and reappears higher up, climbing a winding path into fantastical, folded mountains, so that one panel tells a whole journey. Below him spreads a patchwork of fields laid out like a map. Giovanni di Paolo, one of the most imaginative painters of fifteenth-century Siena, made the panel as part of a series of scenes from the saint’s life, several of which are in the Art Institute. Its jewel-like colour and dreamlike geography are typical of his highly personal style.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
A work made of tempera on panel.
Description from the Art Institute of Chicago.
How it was made
- Tempera
- Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.
Giovanni di Paolo
Italian, 1398–1482 · Born and died in Siena.
Giovanni di Paolo spent his long career in Siena, where he was one of the city’s leading painters through the fifteenth century. Holding to the Sienese tradition of gold grounds and graceful line, he created a highly personal world of slender figures, steep, patterned landscapes and vivid storytelling, seen in narrative panels such as Saint John the Baptist Entering the Wilderness and The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Renaissance
European art from about 1400 to 1600, when painters rediscovered perspective and the classical past.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Art Institute of Chicago has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1933.1010
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
