Page 72 - The mystery of faith

of John’s mission,3 but the longest single account of his life is recorded in the Gospel according to Luke
which starts with the announcement of the angel to Zachariah that his Elizabeth would bear a child
who would be the precursor of the Saviour. Luke then goes on to describe John’s mission, his trials in
the desert, and his baptism of Jesus Christ.4

It is in the writings of Saint John the Evangelist, however, that the words of the Baptist are finally given
voice. After his well-known dedication to theos, logos and luxos, John begins his Gospel with an
account of the Baptist’s testimonies, in which he records the phrase proclaimed by the Baptist upon
meeting his cousin: ‘Ecce Agnus dei’ (‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’).5
It is in this role as Christ’s young herald that the brothers chose to represent the Baptist in the present
sculptures, which are similar, yet distinct, and are dated 1625 and 1628.

These two works allow us to appreciate how the brothers employed various approaches to combining
an almost three-dimensional sculptural foreground with the largely flat landscape background. Both
works depict John as a beardless youth. He is far younger than the age at which he baptized Jesus and
dressed in camel skins, which leave the right shoulder and the upper torso bare. Both include a red
mantle, arranged in angular folds, which is partially looped over the saint’s left arm and falls to frame
the seated figure. These red mantles are similar to that in the Ecce Homo in the Church of Santos Justo
y Pastor (Fig. 2), particularly in the modelling of the folds and the overall sense of plasticity. In both
works, the saints hold a cruciform staff in the left hand and, with the right, point to a lamb, the Agnus
Dei. In both sculptures the figure of the saint, the lamb and the rocks are modelled in a single piece,
and then placed against a background painted with a sylvan river landscape, a reference to John’s future
role as the Baptist.

The two versions differ primarily in the pose and orientation of the saint’s figure, the facial expression,
the pose of the lamb, the overall level of detail, which is more refined in the earlier 1625 version, and
the use of a rocky surround in the 1628 version, which was fashioned from tinted wax. In the earlier
work, the saint is seated in contrapposto, the direction of the torso in opposition to the slight turn of
the head, the legs frontal, the feet resting on different levels, a pose doubtless inspired by one of
Michelangelo’s ignudi in the Sistine Chapel, specifically the ignudo by the shield depicting the Death of
Joab. The brothers altered this pose to direct the saint’s gaze upwards, exchanging terribilitá with an
almost mystical expression, and changed the position of the right hand to more clearly indicate the
lamb.6 This use of a Michelangelesque pose to impart a sense of dynamism in an otherwise static
composition was also employed by Jusepe de Ribera in his Saint Jerome and the Angel, a work that was
widely known through an engraving published around 1621.7 The brothers also employed this seated
contrapposto pose in another version of the Penitent Saint Jerome conserved in the Monastery of San
Jerónimo in Granada, which has been attributed to Alonso Cano, but should instead be considered as
an autograph work by the brothers (Fig. 5).

Traditionally, Mannerist and Baroque artists depicted the Baptist alone in the wilderness, with only a
lamb for company, and adhering to this tradition, the brothers set their modelled figures of the saint

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