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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