Panel with Saint John the Baptist Enthroned from Retable

Domingo Ram's Panel with Saint John the Baptist Enthroned from a Retable, painted around 1450 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a fragment of a large Aragonese retable — the elaborate multi-panel altarpiece structure that dominated Spanish devotional painting through the fifteenth century. Domingo Ram was one of the leading painters in Zaragoza during the mid-fifteenth century, absorbing both Valencian and Catalan influences while the Crown of Aragon's artistic culture was shaped by trade connections with Italy and Flanders. Saint John the Baptist, forerunner and baptizer of Christ, was one of the most important figures in Christian devotion.

Tempera and oil on panel with remnants of gilded background. The throne is rendered with Gothic architectural detail — cusped arches and tracery — while the saint's figure shows a degree of volumetric weight typical of the advancing Renaissance.