Flemish school of the mid-seventeenth century. "Saint Elizabeth and Saint John". Oil on copper.

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OLD MASTERS

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Jul 14, 2021

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• Lot Description
  Flemish school of the mid-seventeenth century. "Saint Elizabeth and Saint John". Oil on copper. Size: 16 x 22 cm; 28,5 x 34,5 cm (frame). This work follows a recurring iconography in European art during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: it presents St. John the Baptist in a landscape setting, dressed in a red cloak, accompanied in this case by St. Elizabeth, his mother. The scene is approached with a clear interest in the landscape, which opens up in clarity as we advance in the depth of the shots. The Gospels say of John the Baptist that he was the son of the priest Zechariah and Elizabeth, cousin of the Virgin Mary. He retired very young to the desert of Judea to lead an ascetic life and preach penance, and recognized in Jesus, who was baptized by him, the Messiah announced by the prophets. A year after the baptism of Christ, in the year 29, John was arrested and imprisoned by the tetrarch of Galilee Herod Antipas, whose marriage with Herodias, his niece and sister-in-law, he had dared to censure. Finally St. John was beheaded, and his head given to Salome as a reward for his beautiful dances. This saint appears in Christian art with two different aspects: as a child, a playmate of Jesus, and as an adult, an ascetic preacher. The adult St. John that we see here appears dressed in oriental art with a camel skin sackcloth, which in the West was replaced with a sheepskin that leaves his arms, legs and part of his torso bare. The red cloak he wears at times, as well as in the scene of his intercession at the Last Judgment, alludes to his martyrdom. In Byzantine art he is depicted as a large-winged angel, with his severed head on a tray which he holds in his hands. However, his attributes in Western art are very different. The most frequent is a lamb, which alludes to Jesus Christ, and he often carries a cross of reeds with a phylactery with the inscription "Ecce Agnus Dei".
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