The Baptism of Christ

The episode: Christ baptised by John

The scene is the baptism in the Jordan, the moment at which the public ministry begins. The gospel account fixes the elements a painter must show: the Baptist, the water, the descending dove, and Christ standing in the river. Venetian altarpieces of the late fifteenth century treated it as a vertical scene, with the figures low and a landscape rising behind them.

Its place in the cycle

First of the ministry scenes. The infancy episodes close with Christ among the doctors; the baptism reopens the narrative with an adult, and the calling of the disciples, the wedding at Cana, and the teaching in Galilee follow from it. It is also the episode that names the Baptist's own role in the story, immediately before his imprisonment and death.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives Cima da Conegliano, 1493, and the church of San Giovanni in Bragora, Venice — a location that is a church rather than a museum, which is what an altarpiece still in place looks like in a record. The dimensions, 350 by 210 centimetres, are consistent with that: this is an altar-scale upright panel. The style is entered as High Renaissance and the artist as Italian. The measured palette reads as blue.