XXII

THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST

THIS is a more interesting work than the last; but it is also gravely and strangely deficient in power of entering into the subject; and this, I think, is common with nearly all efforts that have hitherto been made at its representation. I have never seen a picture of the Baptism, by any painter whatever, which was not below the average power of the painter;¹ and in this conception of Giotto’s, the humility of St. John is entirely unexpressed, and the gesture of Christ has hardly any meaning: it neither is in harmony with the words, “Suffer it to be so now,”² which must have been uttered before the moment of actual baptism, nor does it in the slightest degree indicate the sense in the Redeemer of now entering upon the great work of His ministry. In the earlier representations of the subject, the humility of St. John is never lost sight of; there will be seen, for instance, an effort at expressing it by the slightly stooping attitude and bent knee, even in the very rude design given in outline on the opposite page. I have thought it worth while to set before the reader in this outline one example of the sort of traditional representations which were current throughout Christendom before Giotto arose. This instance is taken from a large choir-book, probably of French, certainly of Northern execution, towards the close of the thirteenth century;* and it

* The exact date, 1290, is given in the title-page of the volume.³

¹ [Compare the discussion, in the second volume of Modern Painters, of the treatment of this subject by various painters: Vol. IV. pp. 265 seq.]

² [Matthew iii. 15.]

³ [The illustration is from folio 29b of vol. iii. of the Antiphonary of the Cistercian Nunnery of Beaupré, near Grammont, formerly in Ruskin’s collection, now

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]