John the Baptist

9th century
Panel on an iconostasis
Pinacoteca Vaticana

To clarify that this is John in Heaven the artist has given him wings. As in most images he wears a camel-skin tunic and carries a long cross. At his feet is the bowl in which his head was placed at Herod's feast. (In the Greek of Matthew 14:11 his head was on a πινακιδα, a "board" or "tablet"; in the Vulgate it was on a discus, "dish.")

John's eyes are on the small figure of Christ that blesses him in the upper left corner, but his hand turns toward the viewer to pass along that blessing with the same finger configuration.

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Photographed at the Pinacoteca Vaticana by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.