John the Baptist's Cry, 'Ecce Agnus Dei' (Lorenzo & Jacopo Salimbeni)

Lorenzo and Jacopo Salimbeni, "Ecce Agnus Dei," from The Life of St. John the Baptist

1416
Fresco
Oratorio of St. John the Baptist, Urbino, Italy

The most curious aspect of this Ecce Agnus Dei ("Behold the Lamb of God") is that Jesus is not in it. Instead, a horseman in the upper right corner points to the next panels, in which John baptizes first the Jewish crowds and then Jesus himself.

The portraiture changes as the panels progress. In the previous panel he was a child. In this one he is a beardless youth in a camel-skin tunic. The next panel gives him a beard, and then the Baptism of Christ panel adds a red mantle. He continues to wear the mantle in the following panel when he is denouncing Herod, and after his death it becomes his shroud.

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Photographed at the oratory by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.