Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 104. (Budapest, 2006)

ANNA EÖRSI: "...there is One Among You Whom You Do Not Recognise": Some Golden Threads to Miklós Boskovits with Reference to Duccio's Saint John the Baptist

condensed text of John 1:26 can be read. Underwood, on the basis of the fresco of the Protaton Church, reconstructs a similar rendition on the first vault of the exonarthex of the Chora Church (Kariye Djami), Istanbul.

30 The first extant Western example of the iconographical type is the painting of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest discussed here (fig. 1). Unlike the mentioned examples this is a symmetrical composition. John is flanked by his listeners, this time with more people seated than standing, yet, the correspondence is quite obvious: in the midst of the group of the Pharisees and priests listening to John emerges Christ; he is among them, but they do not perceive it yet. The Logos, retaining its frontal posture, looks towards John, raises his right hand in blessing, and holds a book in his left. The work is richer in emotion, and more substantive than its Eastern antecedents in so far as besides its primary theme of the preaching, the painter also expresses the intimate, yet for the time being, secret communication between Christ and John. The Forerunner

—like a great actor in a double role

—simultaneously addresses his listeners and the Redeemer. As opposed to the Byzantine examples, his audience does not look hostile: the Jews listen to his words in devotion, as can be read in the nearly contemporaneous biography of the Baptist by Domenico Cavalca.1 Masolino's fresco of around 1435 on the eastern wall of the chapel of Castiglione d'Olona follows the same iconographical type, yet can be related to another scriptural text (fig. 4).

; This time, the inscription on the Baptist's banderole reads: "Ecce agnus dei ecce qui tollit peccata mundi/hic est de quo dixi. postmevent",

33 and the Forerunner here already preaches to the followers of Christ, who do not seem to notice the figure of the Saviour emerging from among them. In this case too, the rendition is at least as much about the still hidden relationship between John and Christ as about the preaching itself.

34 Further renditions follow other iconographical types, but illustrate the passage "but there is one among you whom you do not recognise" (John 1:26). One such example is the scene on the southern gate of the western façade of the Auxerre Cathedral. In the first rendition of the central zone of the pediment, preceding the Baptism, Saint John preaches to people partly seated and partly standing. One of the seated listeners can be identified with Christ on the basis of his crossed nimbus.

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