Saint John the Baptist had a special place in the statuary of the late Middle Ages, particularly in the Germanic Lands, where the prophet was a regular feature on the panels and cases of monumental polychrome sculpted altarpieces, essential instruments of the liturgy at the time, teaching aids as well as veritable objects of devotion. Carved in an almost round shape, our figure would once have been placed at the bottom of the case of one of these large altarpieces. The Baptist is shown here standing, pointing with the index finger of his right hand towards the Agnus Dei resting on the book held in the preacher's left hand. This gesture alludes directly to the words spoken by John the Baptist to designate Jesus: ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’.(Jn. 1:29). This image has a particular resonance in fifteenth-century Rhenish engraving, particularly in the work of Martin Schongauer, whose compositions were often used as models in Germanic sculpture workshops until the mid-sixteenth century. . Thus, although it is not strictly speaking repeated, the influence of a famous version of John the Baptist by Schongauer is latent in our sculpted figure, as it is also in a fine Saint John the Baptist in the Schnütgen Museum, attributed to the workshop of Tilman Riemenschneider, adopting a position and attitude very similar to those of our protagonist, camped on a green ground, ankles open outwards. As in the engraving of the ‘Beautiful Martin’, our prophet is dressed in a camel's skin under his cloak, a reference to the Baptist's stay in the desert. Here, our sculptor has depicted the animal's head falling between the preacher's legs, as can be seen in an anonymous fifteenth-century German engraving, or again in an anonymous fifteenth-century German engraving. This can be seen in an anonymous fifteenth-century German engraving, as well as in a number of sculptures produced in central and southern Germany between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in the Bayerische Museum in Munich, the Kunstsammlungen der Veste in Coburg and the Braunschweiger Dom in Brunswick. Over and above these iconographic similarities, stylistic analysis of our Saint John the Baptist confirms the links he maintains with the art of southern Germany. For example, the stiffness of his legs, his long fingers, his straight nose with its pointed bridge, his high, prominent cheekbones and his large eyes with thick eyelids are all echoed in the Saint John the Baptist in the Church of St John in Nuremberg, attributed to the workshop that sculpted Eichstätter's Master Altar, a masterpiece of southern German sculpture from the very end of the 15th century. This is also the case for the drape of his cloak, pulled back over his left forearm, which runs down his right leg in a pleated arrangement similar to that seen on the Saint John the Baptist in the church at Disentis, in the canton of Grisons. Finally, the slit in his animal skin, revealing the prophet's gaunt chest, can be compared to that of a Saint John the Baptist from Salzburg from the very end of the 15th century. This protruding chest and the parchment-like skin glued to the cheekbones of our Saint John the Baptist lend a singular verism to our figure, which leaves the world of the symbol to enter that of reality and truth. In the twilight of the Gothic period, our work heralds not only the arrival of the Saviour, but also that of a new humanism.
