Talk:John the Baptist (Caravaggio)

The enduring appeal of this John the Baptist lies in its soft, caressing light and velvety rendering of cloth, flesh, and plants. The figure is identifiable as St. John only by virtue of the symbols of Christ displayed in the painting: the ram (sacrificial victim), and the grape-leaves (from whose red juice, akin to the blood of Christ, springs life); otherwise the iconographical subject (the simple, immediately apparent image) appears as a nude youth with an ironic, if not allusive, expression.

So, why is the boy's expression ironic?

My guess is that the irony lies in the way the model seems to step outside the role he's playing, and to be aware of it. This must be a quote from somewhere, but I don't know where - I'll have a look and try to identify it. (My first guess is that it's John Gash or Helen Langdon). PiCo 23:07, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

A little later: Definitely not John Gash. On further thought, the allusiveness reference is almost certainly to the way the pose alludes to the Michelangelo ignudi in the Sistine Chapel, and that might also account for the "ironic" - the boy is saying, in effect, "Hey, look at me, I'm in the Sistine Chapel!" And since this seems to have been dedicated to the son of Ciriaco Mattei who commissioned it, (also named John-Baptist), it puts Ciriaco's son up there with the Michelangelos. Enough reason to be ironic. PiCo 00:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). The material was copied from: http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/c/caravagg/03/271y_ram.html. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. — Cactus Writer ^(talk) 20:47, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on John the Baptist (Caravaggio). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160414201114/http://search.nelson-atkins.org/collections/iscroll-objectview.cfm?id=1130 to http://search.nelson-atkins.org/collections/iscroll-objectview.cfm?id=1130

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:59, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

File:Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio - Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness - Google Art Project.jpg scheduled for POTD

Hello! This is to let editors know that the featured picture File:Michelangelo Merisi, called Caravaggio - Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness - Google Art Project.jpg, which is used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for July 30, 2020. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2020-07-30. Any improvements or maintenance to this article should be made before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:32, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

John the Baptist was the subject of at least eight paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. This work, a brooding, "psychologically interiorized" oil-on-canvas portrait of John the Baptist as a young adult, shows him without any of his usual symbolic attributes (except for the cross he holds), and is considered by scholars the most radical portrait of the series. Caravaggio's unusual practice of composing directly on the canvas without any underpainting, incising salient features with the blunt end of his brush handle, or perhaps with a knife, is evident here particularly on John's left leg. This painting is in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Painting credit: Caravaggio

Recently featured:

• Thomas Corwin
• Cirsium eriophorum
• Belgian franc