Panel of Saint John the Baptist with Scenes from His Life

Domingo Ram's Panel of Saint John the Baptist with Scenes from His Life, now in the Metropolitan Museum, is a companion piece to the Panel from Saint John Retable, together forming part of the same dismembered altarpiece dedicated to the Baptist. The central image of Saint John — shown with his characteristic lamb and long staff surmounted by a cross — would have served as the focal devotional image of the altarpiece, while surrounding scenes narrated the episodes of his life. The Baptist held particular importance in Aragonese religious culture, and major commissions for Baptist altarpieces were prestigious undertakings for both patron and painter. Ram's treatment reflects the Valencian and Aragonese tradition of narrative altarpiece painting that flourished in the eastern kingdoms of Spain throughout the second half of the fifteenth century.

Ram renders Saint John with the frontal, iconic dignity required of a main altarpiece figure, using rich color and precise detail in the lamb's fleece and the Baptist's camel-hair garment. The surrounding narrative scenes are painted in a smaller scale and more active compositional register, with Flemish-influenced landscape backgrounds and figure groupings.