Baptism of Christ, St. John Altarpiece

The baptism as an altarpiece still in its church

The episode is the baptism in the Jordan. What separates this entry from the others that carry the same subject is not the scene but the record's location field: Santa Corona in Vicenza is a church, not a museum, and the dimensions given are 400 by 263 centimetres. A four-metre upright in a church is what an altarpiece looks like when it has never left the altar it was made for.

Where the episode falls

At the opening of the ministry, between the hidden years and the calling of the first disciples. The title in this record adds a second frame — it names the work a St. John Altarpiece — so the same picture serves two orders at once: in the life of Christ the baptism is a beginning, and in the life of the Baptist it is the summit, the moment his own role is completed.

The record

The catalogue gives Giovanni Bellini and 1502. The style is entered as High Renaissance and the artist as Italian; the subject fields class the work as religious. The measured palette reads as yellow. The entry carries no note on who paid for the altarpiece or when it was installed, and this page adds none.