Big Ancient Picture : "saint John Baptist And The Lamb"

In spite of innumerable repaints, wears and chancis, it emerges from this composition a power whose exchange of glances between the mystical lamb and Saint John the Baptist is not the least part.
Here, the Saint is depicted in under the iconography that, although traditional was popularized by Ribera, The Spagnoletto, in the guise of a young man dressed in a red tunic and carrying a long cross of reeds and accompanied by a lamb symbolizing Christ.
The more we examine it, the more we discover details of great quality through the repaints certainly too covering.
Because of these, it is difficult for me to date this painting of the Spanish or Neapolitan School (at the time the two kingdoms were intimately related) between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, it was rented at the beginning of the nineteenth and wears a superb frame of the time with "mecca" gilding, silver leaf covered with a yellow varnish to give the illusion of gold.
Oil on canvas 97 X 73 cm, frame 81 X 105 cm.
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