Saint John the Baptist in the Desert

Martino Piazza painted this Saint John the Baptist in the Desert around 1517 for the National Gallery. Piazza was a Lombard painter from Lodi who worked in the tradition of Leonardo's Milanese followers, bringing Leonardesque influences to provincial churches. The tempera-on-panel medium required a carefully gessoed surface and was painted in fine, precise layers, yielding a luminous, jewel-like surface of great durability.

The panel demonstrates the Leonardesque influence on provincial Lombard painting, with soft atmospheric modeling and the warm palette characteristic of the Milanese school adapted to the devotional format.