St. John the Baptist (1602) Caravaggio. In art, there have been many “interesting” depictions of St.JtB, but this is one of the most thought provoking. Why is he reclined like that? Where are is his clothes? Why is it a ram and not a lamb? Where are the other symbols we are used to seeing with St.JtB ? Why does he look so happy instead of introspective? Is it even St.JtB and not Issac (after being spared by God)?

It would be easy to dismiss this as Caravaggio simply painting a daringly sexy depiction of a Christian saint, laughing provocatively as he turns toward us. After all, Caravaggio took other unthinkable liberties with his religious paintings, so why not take it one step further?

In order to fully understand what Caravaggio was doing we must look at Michangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling – specifically the Sacrifice of Noah. Here we see the ignudo in the top left corner and the sacrifice of the ram in the center. The ignudi are the only non-Christian elements in the chapel and were the source of controversy in the late 16th century because the nudity was considered unbecoming.

My take is that Caravaggio was commissioned by Mattei to create a painting to be dedicated to his son, Giovanni Battista Mattei. Caravaggio must have been inspired by his namesake to take elements from this portion of the ceiling to create something entirely new. The ignudi are thought of as an idealized depiction of the perfection of humanity as created by God, Caravaggio transformed that into the actual perfection of humanity depicted by his ultra-realistic version of St.JtB. He then uses the Ram instead of the lamb to reinforce the idea of sacrifice and he includes grape vines in the upper right to symbolize the body and blood of Christ. St. JtB is smiling because he knows what is coming, he knows that through the sacrifice of Jesus we will all be saved.

**Credit to Andrew Graham-Dixon for linking all of this together in his book “A life Sacred and Profane: Caravaggio**