Saint John The Baptist – Follower Of Leonardo Da Vinci

Oil on canvas. French school from the end of the 17th century.
Our composition is based on a workshop work by Leonardo da Vinci, "Saint John the Baptist", which was part of the royal collections and is now kept at the Louvre Museum (room 710, Denon wing). There are still a few reproductions of the painting by the Lombard genius, some faithful to the current state of the painting in the Louvre (Saint John the Baptist transformed into Bacchus), while others, rarer, represent the figure of the saint (before the transformation carried out at the end of the 17th century) like ours. From the beginning of the 17th century, the image of the young smiling saint in the work kept at the Louvre seems to have disturbed religious sensibilities, which probably explains its transformation at the end of the century into Bacchus, with the addition of several attributes of the god of wine, such as the bunch of grapes in the left hand, the crown of ivy on the head and the change of the cross into a thyrsus. In our painting, the face of the saint moves away from the plastic of the work in the Louvre and presents a proximity to the art of Leonardo's Lombard emulator, Bernardino Luini (c. 1480 – 1532), giving it a great mystery. Thus, our painter did not just make a servile copy, he also modified the background scene, by integrating a representation of the baptism of Christ in place of a rich landscape, making our painting a singular work. Our painting was therefore indeed made at the very end of the 17th century, shortly before the figure of John the Baptist was transformed into Bacchus.

We have chosen to present the work to you in a large casseta frame in gilded and blackened wood.
Dimensions: 134 x 82.5 cm – 158 x 97 cm with the frame
Sold with certificate of expertise and invoice