Reliquary Box with Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist
Unknown Artist
1300s
Medium
tempera and gold on wood
Dimensions
9 × 23.5 × 9 cm
Classification
Wood
Department
Medieval Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of Bruce Ferrini in memory of Robert P. Bergman
Accession Number
1999.229
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
John the Baptist--the first person to recognize Christ as the promised savior and the one who baptized him in the Jordan River--was one of the Byzantine Empire’s most revered saints. This box shows four scenes from the saint’s life: John’s martyrdom, Christ’s baptism, John’s birth, and the announcement of his birth to his parents. It probably once housed one of the saint’s relics; several were kept in churches and monasteries in Constantinople, including fragments of his skull and right arm and ...