The Youthful Saint John the Baptist

Domenico Pieratti

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

As their patron saint, John the Baptist was a prominent fixture in the homes of civic-minded Florentines. This large, lyric statuette by Pieratti, the city's first important Baroque sculptor, shows exacting yet expansive compositional experimentation. A masterly study in frozen motion, it evinces discerning responses to lessons learned from great masters. The virile type, an artfully unkempt boy of the people, is Michelangelesque, with a nod to the head of David. From Caravaggio comes the adjustment of limbs in angles to maximize contrasts of light and shadow. Strikingly Caravaggesque is the youth's arm hooked over his chest, holding a honeycomb (referring to the Baptist's wilderness diet). His other hand holds the remnants of his shepherd's crook and a scroll which undoubtedly announced Ecce agnus dei (behold the lamb of God) in deference to his cousin Jesus. The surface is abraded: the work stood in a garden around a hundred years ago, but mercifully briefly, not long enough to diminish its authority and charm.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art