The Baptism of Christ

The baptism in the Jordan

The episode opens the public life. All four gospels report it: John the Baptist pours water over Christ in the river Jordan, the Spirit descends as a dove, and a voice from heaven speaks. The iconography settled early and barely moved for a thousand years — the river dividing the panel, the Baptist on one bank, the dove above the head, and attending angels holding the garments.

Where it sits in the sequence

It is the first scene of the ministry and the pivot of the whole cycle. Everything before it belongs to the infancy; everything after — the calling of the disciples, the miracles, the teaching, and finally the Passion — proceeds from this moment. In cycles painted for baptisteries the scene is the governing image rather than one episode among many.

The catalogue entry

The record enters the work under Leonardo da Vinci, dated 1475, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, at 151 by 177 centimetres. The style is given as Early Renaissance and the artist as Italian. The subject fields class it as a group composition and as religious. The measured palette reads as ochre. The record states a single attribution and this page repeats it without adding to it; questions of workshop hands are not part of the entry.