Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Thursday 23 June 2022

The Nativity of St John the Baptist


Today is the anticipated Feast of the Natuvity of St John the Baptist - as this year the Sacred Heart falls tomorrow on the usual day assigned to celebrating the birth of St John.

File:Reni, Guido - St John the Baptist in the Wilderness - Google Art Project.jpg

St John the Baptist preaching in the Desert
Guido Reno 1575-1642
Painted 1636-7
Dulwich Picture Gallery

Image: Wikimedia

Looking online for images of St John I was struck by the number similar of the Guifo Reni reproduced above which seem more concerned to depict a handsome male virtually nude than to convey anything of what he might be actually preaching about. Another fine example from over a century later is by Mengs:

File:Anton Raphael Mengs - St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness - Google Art Project.jpg

St John the Baptist preaching in the Desert
Anton Raphael Mengs 1728 -1779
Painted probably in the 1760s
Museum of Fine Arts Houston

Image Wikimedia 

Saying that is not to be in any way censorious or puritanical, nor is it to criticise them as paintings but just to comment on the extent to which the image had politely and elegantly moved away from the doubtless more intimidating figure presented by the real St John in the first century Judean wilderness and on the banks of the Jordan. There is more of that in the painting by El Greco:

File:El Greco - St. John the Baptist - WGA10548.jpg

St John the Baptist
El Greco
1600
Fine Arts Museum San Francisco 

Image: WikiPaintings

If you do not want to travel to California then in Cardiff there is a lightly later version from the workshop of El Greco:



St John the Baptist
Workshop of El Greco
Painted about 1610
National Museum of Wales

Image: Wikidata 

In 2013 I posted The Nativity of St John the Baptist  for today’s feast. That has links to other posts I had written previously about St John.

Last year I posted about two later fifteenth century Aragonrse paintings that depict the story of the birth of the Great Forerunner in The Birth of St John the Baptist

Some years ago I wrote for the other of St John’s Fessts, that of his Decollation, a piece about six English medieval churches dedicated to him and for which in different ways I have affection or a connection. That illustrated article can be seen at Churches of St John the Baptist

I realise looking at it again that I should have included Merton College Chapel in Oxford as well. Researching images for this article led me to the website of a church that I clearly need to visit, the very impressive late nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic St John the Baptist Holland Road which does not appear to be as well known as it should be. The parish’s well-illustrated website is at About St John the Baptist Church, Shepherd's Bush, London

St John the Baptist Pray for us


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