So this episode, we're going to focus specifically on the birth and naming of John the Baptist.
And I wanted us to have a look at this polyptych altarpiece, which isn't currently on display.
And I've asked the Gallery to bring it into this room. As you can see, it's raised up
on blocks at the moment so we can have a better look.
Wonderful to get close to it and have a chance to see it.
It's a beautiful thing. It's a very early Florentine altarpiece. It was painted by an
artist called Niccolò di Pietro Gerini.
And it's quite early, it's 1387 and it's an extraordinary example of what we call a polyptych,
so a multi-paneled altarpiece. You see in the central scene here, we actually have the
Baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, flanked by two saints. This is a very unusual example.
It's actually the earliest example in the history of art of this narrative scene taking
place in this key area of an altarpiece. It's the sort of area you'd normally expect to
find just a single standing or perhaps the Virgin enthroned. What we have here on the
bottom is called a predella, which is really a box-like step. It raises the main tier of
the altarpiece up, secures it. Normally, we expect to find little narrative scenes of
the lives of the saints who are represented above.
So it's as if a scene that would normally have appeared in that narrative strip has
got bumped up to the status of the central panel.
Yes, upgraded as it were. And what better scene than the Baptism?
Absolutely.
But because we're focusing, specifically, today on the Birth and Naming of John the
Baptist, I thought we could focus specifically on this scene in the predella. So in this
predella panel, we have the annunciation to Zacharias. This is how he finds out that his
elderly wife, Elizabeth, will bear a child.
It's a moment set in the sanctuary of the Temple in Jerusalem, in the very heart of
the Jewish cult. He, as a priest, would have the job, along with the other priests, on
a sort of rota, of going in to the sanctuary with the task of sanctifying, making holy
the altar. He's using a thurible, which is a sort of metal pot which burns incense in
it, and swinging it in order to sanctify the altar. I love the fact that the Baptist's
piece of equipment's still used in Christian worship. It would've been used at the altar
above which this altarpiece was placed. So the congregation would have seen the very
action happening live that they also see represented in the image by a Christian priest, rather
than a Jewish one.
This wonderful moment, I'm always struck by the Angel Gabriel who's entering stage left
as it were here, swooping in with that gesture of blessing.
Just as in the annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, isn't it?
It reminds you of that, this is a portentous moment. That kind of action there, that swooping
movement, guides the eye across the predella to read from left to right. But it always
strikes me, too, is that it captured a key moment, particularly because that thurible,
as you described, is swinging mid-air.
Yes. It's like suspended animation. It stops in midair. And again I think that seems to
have a wider implication because Zacharias himself doesn't believe the angel's message.
He thinks it's impossible and as a punishment for that, he is struck dumb. He loses the
power of speech. There's another moment of arrested development just as the thurible
is hanging in mid-air so his speech goes.
Both are suspended.
We have to wait for something to be completed.
Well and actually, beautifully, following from that scene, we immediately have, adjacent
to it, the birth of John the Baptist. You can see very tired looking Elizabeth reclining
in her bed and being ministered to, as it were, by her maid servants and the young John
being bathed in the foreground.
But what we don't see is what gets Zacharias back his power of speech. We don't see the
moment in the story that happens beyond the birth.
Yes. Actually, he remains mute until the naming of his son.
Which is about eight days after the birth.
Yes. That's not represented here but actually, the National Gallery owns another predella
panel by an artist called Giovanni di Paolo. It's slightly later than this one but perhaps
we could get out of this uncomfortable squat and go and have a look at it.
Stretch our legs.
Yes. That would be nice.
So here, in Giovanni di Paolo's predella, we actually have a version of the same scene.
We have the birth of John the Baptist again but within that scene, we've included the
naming. And actually, if you look, the scene takes place in something that looks like an
Italian Renaissance interior.
A rather grand one and yet very sweetly domestic at the same time, the baby being bathed. A
servant warming a towel by the fire, ready for that baby to be wrapped in. Those domestic
details, as well as being beautifully observed and very recognisable even to us today, seems
to me, also have a theological aspect to them and to relate very much to the Baptist and
his future ministry. The water and fire, for example, those very elemental things, both
have strong associations with the Baptist. The water is going to be the tool of his trade,
if you like, as a baptiser. The fire relates to his preaching, a lot of which is about
judgment and he famously says that the wheat and the chaff are going to be separated and
the chaff will be burned. So we see in them almost premonitions of what he's going to
go and do and talk about in his later life.
Anticipations of his ministry, if you will but yet, so beautifully, naturalistically
included here because they don't seem an unusual inclusion at all.
The unusual inclusion, actually, is Zacharias because this event of the naming only occurs eight days later, doesn't it?
They have been compressed together.
Yes, exactly. The inclusion of Zacharias may well be because the patron of this altarpiece
is believed to have been called, Zacharias. He may have stipulated that inclusion. But
for us it's very helpful because it reminds us as we saw in the annunciation in the Gerini
that Zacharias, in disbelief, he loses his voice, doesn't he?
He disbelieves the angel. That's his punishment.
Exactly. Instead, when Elizabeth suggests that the child's name should be called, 'John',
he has to confirm that in writing because he can't speak and then his voice is miraculously
restored. And it's a surprise because that wasn't a family name, was it?
It's not a family name and so everyone in their circle might well have expected him
to be called after his father, for example or at least an established family name. And
the rupture that's represented by him being given an unexpected name, 'John', again,
I think, tells us something fascinating about the way in which his whole life is a form
of disruption of convention. He comes from this very established priestly family at the
heart of the Temple, at the heart of Jerusalem but he's going to leave all that behind, go
out into the wilderness and then all through his life, representing new way of doing things.
It's as if the old order of things that he comes from transforms, in his person, into
a radically new order of things of which he's the herald. It's almost as if he's a hinge
between two aeons.