Abstract
In Leonardo da Vinci's St John the Baptist, the figure is androgynous, whose expression and posture look enchanting and tempting. Such an image does not accord with the description in the Bible, which is remarkably unusual in Christian culture. People in the Renaissance began to rethink about truth and revelation of Christian religion, believing that Christian thoughts and culture were not monolithic any more. St John the Baptist predicts the coming of Jesus; namely, he witnesses the true light. However, da Vinci transformed his image characteristics and gave the image new connotation and symbolic meaning, which made Christian truth that St John foretells ambiguous. This is an irony in the painting. Da Vinci brought this figure inner tension by means of causing contradiction between the Christian prophet and the androgynous image, which suggested serious conflict between Hellenistic truth and Christian revelation. The irony in this painting is double: first, the figure St John the Baptist is ironic, for he predicts truth and he himself is not truth; second, the way da Vinci represented the image is ironic, as the figure is St John the Baptist but not the original prophet John in the Bible. In double ironies, da Vinci implied his rethinking about two questions: What is truth? What is the way to truth?
First Page
61
Last Page
68
Recommended Citation
Chen, Chunlian. 2018. "St John the Baptist: Da Vinci's Irony." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 38, (1): pp.61-68. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol38/iss1/13
