Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The episode: Ecce Agnus Dei
This is the moment in the first chapter of John when the Baptist sees Christ approaching and points him out to those around him. It is a scene of identification rather than of action: the Baptist speaks and gestures, and the ministry of Christ begins because of it. Painters fixed the iconography as a standing Baptist in a rough garment, one arm raised toward a distant or approaching figure, sometimes with a lamb at his feet.
Its position in the sequence
Immediately around the baptism in the Jordan, and immediately before the calling of the first disciples — two of whom, in John's account, leave the Baptist to follow Christ because of this pointing. It is the hinge on which one ministry ends and another begins, which is why the episode appears in both a life of Christ and a life of the Baptist.
What the catalogue holds
The record gives Bartolome Esteban Murillo, 1655, and the Art Institute of Chicago. At 270.2 by 184.5 centimetres the canvas is upright and at altar scale. The style is entered as Baroque and the artist as Spanish; the subject fields class the work as a single male figure and as religious. The measured palette reads as ochre.
Sources
6 references- Murillo, Bartolomé Estebán — Getty ULAN
Spanish painter and draftsman, 1618-1682
- Bartolomé Esteban Murillo — Wikipedia
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo ( mure-IL-oh, m(y)uu-REE-oh, Spanish: [baɾtoloˈme esˈteβam muˈɾiʎo]; late December 1617, baptised 1 January 1618 – 3 April 1682) was a Spanish Baroque painter. Although he is best known for his religious works, Mur
- Saint John the Baptist Pointing to Christ — Wikidata
description: painting by Bartolomé Estéban Murillo; inception: 1655; dimensions: 270.2 × 184.5 cm; collection: Art Institute of Chicago
- artic.edu — record for "Saint John the Baptist Pointing to Christ"
Primary source record for this work (artic.edu).
- John the Baptist — Wikipedia
John the Baptist (c. 6 BC – c. AD 30) was a religious preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Catholicism, and Oriental Ortho
- Bartolomé Estéban Murillo - Saint John the Baptist Pointing to Christ - 1960.2 - Art Institute of Chicago — Wikimedia Commons
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
