While we're still in the Frari church in Venice in the mind's eye, there are two other artworks
that should be mentioned and looked at from the 15th century: Donatello's St. John the Baptist,
and Giovanni Bellini's Sacristy Altarpiece. This blog entry will focus on the first.
Donatello's St. John the Baptist seems a strange sculpture to find in Venice. But everywhere that
Florentines went, the lamb patron saint was sure to go. And in Rome and Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries Florentines paid for large chapels and even churches that made their presence known and spread the reputation of their home-grown artists. In the Franciscan church of Venice, called the Frari, the chapel immediately to the right of the main altar, was the Chapel of the Florentines and was dedicated to St. John the Baptist.
On the plan at 16, the sculpture is now part of a sculpted triptych with two other saints not by Donatello.
In 1438 Donatello was commissioned to provide the chapel with this image of the saint carved out of wood and painted in polychrome colors to make him look real.
John retains the shape of the wood log from which he is carved, and, apart from his right arm
which is lifted up, stands in a rigid stiff way on a plinth. He holds in his left hand the scroll which
reads "Ecce agnus dei," "Behold the Lamb of God" because he is the person who baptizes Christ
and is the prophet who recognizes Christ as the Messiah. (Part of the Agnus Dei is not visible.)
Presumably in his right hand he would have originally held a wooden cross staff, one of his
attributes. He has long hair, a wild look in his eye, and is dressed in animal skins only, all signs
of his having lived in the desert as an ascetic. Donatello uses the thin tubular shape of the wood
to emphasize the thinness of John's body. The saint has fasted and prayed, eating very little in his
life in the desert. His mouth is open as if he is saying the words he points to on his scroll - His
body has eschewed the earthly life and John has concentrated on the life of the spirit, the breath of the mouth that speaks out about the Messiah. He has given his body up to worship a Christ he dies for later.
So similar this statue is to Donatello's much later, 1453-55, Mary Magdalene (see another blog entry) that it must be seen as a preparation for that statue.
He is so gaunt, ragged, and has such strange eyes that he looks like many homeless people on the streets today. His skin is painted brown to tell us he has lived out under the sun for years. But, as is true for most Donatello works, his St. John looks alive; we feel a presence under the animal skins and cloak. This artist always manages to convey something of the soul inside a person when he carves and John is no exception.
His eyes, one wayward, express the shock of having seen a deity, the electric stunning of a person who has witnessed something beyond this realm. Hard to confront the directness with which Donatello conveys his living in the world of the spirit. People turn away from this statue out of respect for the power of its message.
Donatello does not give us a pretty image to absorb, but rather a person difficult to look at, as are many homeless people. He reminds the viewer that material life is not what is most important, and that the life of the spirit has unspeakable rewards.
The date of the commission, 1438, suggests that it was ordered by Cosimo Medici in Florence after he returned in 1432 from his exile in Venice. Certainly Cosimo would have chosen John as the subject for a Florentine chapel since he is the patron saint of Florence. But choosing to portray John in his life in the desert is also probably Cosimo's choice as he would have viewed his life in Venice as a virtual exile's experience, living in a desert away from his cultural home, Florence. John's statue marks Cosimo's, a Florentine's, place in the most important Venetian Franciscan church. John's asceticism, then, becomes Cosimo's, and in showing him fasting and wasting away, the saint stands in for Cosimo's feelings about exile. At the same time John atones for Cosimo's exile sin, which, in the end, brings the reward of return to Florence. John lets every Florentine who visits the Frari see how hard it is to be away from Florence.
Cosimo's exile was not the hardship it was made out to be. He took his private library with him and bought books to add to it. He lived in the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore (before Palladio
had built the church) and he renovated the cloister while he was there; he had plenty of money and
was not homeless, but Venice still was not Florence, and like Dante, he longed to be back there.
He knew he owed his life to the Venetians for keeping him safe while in exile, so he sent them the statue of St. John the Baptist as a gift. What a reminder of the sparse life of an exile! When Cosimo
returned to Florence, Brunelleschi's dome was nearly complete, 1436, and the Florentine sacred
trust was renewed with the patron saint and the major patron reunited in a common flourishing.
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