Cleveland Museum of Art

Reliquary Box with Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist

Date

1300s

Medium

tempera and gold on wood

Culture

Byzantium, Constantinople, late Byzantine period, 14th century

Department

Medieval Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

John the Baptist--the first person to recognize Christ as the promised savior and the one who baptized him in the Jordan River--was one of the Byzantine Empire’s most revered saints. This box shows four scenes from the saint’s life: John’s martyrdom, Christ’s baptism, John’s birth, and the announcement of his birth to his parents. It probably once housed one of the saint’s relics; several were kept in churches and monasteries in Constantinople, including fragments of his skull and right arm and locks of his blood-clotted hair.

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