23. Giovanni di Paolo. The Baptist Entering the Wilderness.The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs.Martin A. Ryerson Collection (I933. IOIO)24. Giovanni di Paolo. The Head of SaintJohn the BaptistBrought to Herod. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. andMrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection ( 933. 1015)the panel and three more at an acute angle running acrossthem. Between them are fields demarcated in the sameway, with the horizontals and diagonals incised in the paintsurface.Geometrical patterning is used to still greater effect in asecond series of panels with scenes from the life of the Baptist,of which six are in the Art Institute of Chicago and twoin the Westfilisches Landesmuseum, Miinster, while singlepanels are in the Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena,the Louvre, and the Robert Lehman Collection in the Met-ropolitan Museum. In every case save one, the ChicagoBaptist Entering the Wilderness (fig. 23), the action is confinedto the lower half of the vertical panels, and a vertical architecturalstructure is superimposed on the narrative scene,so that the horizontal panels in London must have beenplanned first and were later extended as vertical designs. Ifthe horizontal panels date from I454, the vertical panelscan hardly have been produced before the late I450s.The vertical panel in the Lehman Collection representsThe Angel Gabriel Announcing to Zacharias the Birth of a Son(fig. 25). Its two main figures once more depend from abronze relief on the Siena baptismal font. But whereas inthe bronze relief Jacopo della Quercia places the figures tothe right of center under an arch that is generically Romanesque,Giovanni di Paolo moves them to the middle of hispanel, and replaces della Quercia's spectators with twohighly expressive groups of spectators of his own. As withthe other vertical scenes, the action is confined to the bottomhalf of the panel, and the upper part is filled with atemple whose structure recalls the fragile buildings in BurgundianInternational Gothic illuminations. The twelveupright panels (one of them is still missing) were mountedin two groups of six paired panels. The two upper panels ineach group were ogival, and the four lower panels rectangular.The Lehman Zacharias, the first panel in the series,occupied the top left-hand corner of the left wing. On itsback is an Annunciatory Angel painted over a hinge coveredwith gesso, and the wings must therefore have been hinged.This is confirmed by the back of the Norton Simon Museum'sBaptism of Christ (the only one of the rectangularpanels that has not been thinned down), which is coveredwith a reddish preparation for gilding or porphyry paint.Reconstructed in this way, each wing measures 250 centimetersin height and 80 centimeters in width, and thetotal width when the wings were closed would have beenI60 centimeters. The possibility that they enclosed a paintingof the Baptist can be ruled out on the grounds of size,and the tabernacle or custodia must therefore have containeda sculpture. The combination of sculpture and painting inSiena was not uncommon. There are records, for example,of a number of wooden statues of Saint Anthony the Abbotwith painted wings. Possibly the commission for the panels20
25. Giovanni di Paolo. TheAngel Gabriel Announcing toZacharias the Birth of a Son.Robert Lehman Collection,I975 (I975.1.37)21