Giovanni Baglione

Since 1970 in the possession of the current owner's immediate family since, who were donated the work by an uncle.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas has a very old lining which is no longer ensuring a stable support and there is quite extensive flaking with many small paint losses across the paint surface. The canvas will need to be relined to ensure a stable structural support. There is one area in the centre of the composition just above the loin cloth of Saint John the Baptist which is particularly fragile, with a horizontal line of small losses running across his left arm. I would be confident that relining would successfully stabilise the paint surface. Paint Surface The paint surface has very discoloured old varnish layers and a considerable amount of surface dirt and cleaning should therefore result in a transformation in the overall appearance. A number of areas of retouching are visible in natural light, having discoloured. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows different phases of retouching, the most recent of which include retouchings on and around the area of flaking above the loin cloth of Saint John the Baptist, the largest of which measures approximately 4 x 8 cm, a number of smaller areas in his hair, in the detail of the drapery above the sheep in the lower left of the composition and other scattered areas of inpainting. There would appear to be other areas of retouching which are only just identifiable under ultra-violet light, particularly in the dark shadows of the background in the upper left of the composition. There may be other retouchings beneath the varnish layers which are not identifiable under ultra-violet light. Summary The painting therefore requires structural intervention to ensure long-term stability and, while a number of retouchings have been applied in the past, it is encouraging to note that the details of the painting and, in particular the flesh tones, appear to be well preserved.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This newly discovered Saint John the Baptist was painted by Giovanni Baglione in the first few years of the seventeenth century. It is an impressive work and is one of the very first reactions to Caravaggio's oeuvre in Rome. In that sense it is one of the few truly Caravaggesque paintings rather than a product of the slightly later style generally referred to as Caravaggism, which was in fact more dependent on the work of Bartolomeo Manfredi and his Manfrediana Methodus than on Caravaggio himself. 

Baglione's early training was deeply influenced by Federico Barocci and Cavalier d' Arpino and his works before 1600 display a soft and late Mannerist approach to movement characterized by gentle pastel colours. Yet after 1600 his style shifted quite dramatically in reponse to Caravaggio's work in the Contarelli Chapel of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. If this date thus provides us with a useful terminus post quem for the execution of this painting, one can also propose quite a clear terminus ante quem since Baglione was to turn his back on his essais in Caravaggism after the famous trial of 1603 in which he sued Caravaggio for defamation, as well as his close associates Onorio Longhi, Filippo Trisegni and Orazio Gentileschi. It seems Caravaggio did not appreciate Baglione emulating his style, though other contemporaries must have thought more highly of Baglione, electing him principe of the Accademia di San Luca three times. 

The artist was to return to a rather sweeter and perhaps more laboured style in his later work so it is arguably his pre- and Caravaggesque phases which are his most interesting. His works from the first few years of the century share with the present painting a very novel and excited interest in naturalism and the mood created through lighting, and parallel the development of Orazio Gentileschi whose style was also shifting in reaction to Caravaggio's work. For example, the overall composition and the realism of the angels' wings in Baglione's Saint Francis with two Angels from 1601¹ - his very first response to Caravaggio - can be closely linked to Gentileschi's Stigmatization of Saint Francis,² which in turn is a response to Caravaggio's treatment of the same subject which at the time was in Rome in the collection of the banker Ottavio Costa.³ Contemporaneously, an acute interest in depicting the male nude developed in Rome, again driven by Caravaggio: Baglione's Saint Sebastian healed by an Angel,⁴ from circa 1603, shares with the present work many of the features of early Caravaggism. An intense lateral light glimmers on the flesh of the beautiful, full-lipped youth whose body and musculature are as much the focus of the painting as the superficially religious context of the subject matter. Appropriately, the blend of these different elements was to culminate in one of Caravaggio's greatest works, his Saint John from 1604.⁵ 

Baglione's distinctive hand can be discerned in many of the details, from his characteristic way of painting the hand, feet and eyes, to the outlines of the nails. He is known to have treated the subject of Saint John in the wilderness in several later versions but the present work, by far the largest and most accomplished, is seemingly unrecorded. A very closely related drawing (see fig. 1), typically rapid in execution as was Baglione's style as a draughtsman, was sold in these Rooms, 4 July 1977, lot 78. It maps out the composition very clearly and shows that from an early stage in the creative process Baglione was keen to include both the foreground plants and the background landscape, elements which are more usually merely alluded to in his work.



1. Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; see M. Smith O'Neil, Giovanni Baglione, Artistic Reputation in Baroque Rome, Cambridge 2002, pp. 202-03, cat. no. 20, reproduced p. 85, plate 45.
2. Private collection; see K. Christiansen and J.W. Mann, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, exh. cat., New York 2001, pp. 53-55, cat. no. 3, reproduced in colour.
3. Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; see J.K. Cadogan (ed.), Wadsworth Atheneum Paintings II, Italy and Spain, Fourteenth through Nineteenth Centuries, Hartford 1991, pp. 84-91, reproduced p. 85.
4. Private collection, New York, promised gift to the Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University; see Smith O'Neil, op. cit., p. 76, plate 39.
5. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas; see E. W. Rowlands, Italian Paintings, 1300-1800, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Milan 1996, pp. 215-226, reproduced in colour p. 217.