Giovanni della Robbia (Florence 1469 - 1529/1530) YOUNG SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE DESERT, CIRCA 1520 small statuette set in partially glazed polychrome terracotta, cm 22,5x25x8,5; on wooden base covered in velvet, cm 5,5x26x11 YOUNG SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST IN THE DESERT, CIRCA 1520 This small, delightful clay group - where the warm tones of the clay are combined with a vivid polychrome glazing, according to aThis small, delightful fictile group - in which warm clay tones are combined with a vivid polychrome glaze, according to an effective naturalistic attitude recurring in Della Robbia's production in the early 16th century - depicts, with delicate tenderness and an enchanting fairy-tale fantasy, the young Baptist, recognizable by his rustic tunic "of camel's skin" embellished with a blue mantle and by the usual scroll with the prophetic inscription "ECCE AGNUS", during his first youthful hermitage in the "deserts" of Judea, sitting in prayer on a mossy rock cliff from which a limpid spring gushes out, evoking the waters of the Jordan and the regenerating purification of baptism, under the curious gaze of a white rabbit and a tame fawn. Gentle and captivating presences to which we must also attribute a similar symbolic value, just as the axe thrust into the root of the tree recalls the vehement words of the Precursor recalled in the Gospels ("The axe is already at the root of the trees, therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire": Matthew 3.10 and Luke 3.9; cf. Dalli Regoli 1994). On the other hand this singular, affable iconographic interpretation of the infancy of Saint John the Baptist appears to be deduced in a very precise way from a popular fourteenth-century hagiographic text, the Volgarizzamento delle Vite de' SS. Fathers, referred to the Pisan Dominican Friar Domenico Cavalca and revived in the middle of the fifteenth century by Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo il Magnifico, with significant results in the art of the time, where one imagines him already devoted around the age of five to privation. devoted around the age of five to the privations of the hermit's life, during which he is said to have recognised the divine beauty of Creation in the small inhabitants of the woods that cheered him up like domestic animals ("he began to find those little beasts, that were in the woods... and he lived with them and said: These are things that Domeneddio has made... and you see how beautiful they are; and he kept them for a while and rejoiced with them... and those little beasts came to him, and stayed with him, as we do with domestic animals": cf. Aromberg Lavin 1955; M. Bormand, in I Della Robbia... 2009, p. 351, no. 81). In Florence - where Saint John was venerated as the patron saint of the city and of the powerful Arte della Lana - the popularity of this theme, alluding to a puerity already aware of its spiritual duties, was further contributed by the sacred representations performed by the youngsters affiliated to the numerous "compagnie di dottrina" encouraged by the Medici and by Bishop Antoniono Pierozzi (Paolozzi Strozzi 2013), such as The Representation of Saint John in the Desert, written in the middle of the century by Feo Belcari, which recounts the first experiences of the infant Baptist in tones comparable to those that characterise our terracotta. Moreover, the exemplary infancy of St. John, was already for some time among the subjects recommended for the images of domestic devotion in the widespread Rule of the government of family care of the Dominican Giovanni Dominici, appropriate to the religious and moral education of children as such as to stimulate the emulation ("The first" The first" rule "is to have paintings in the house of holy children", and "so I say of sculptures", "in which your child, still in swaddling clothes, delights as if similar and enraptured by the similar, with acts and signs gratifying to childhood... Let him be mirrored in the Holy Baptist dressed in camel skin, a child entering the desert": cf. Gentilini 1980, pp. 87-88), Towards the end of the century such edifying hagiography, being in consonance with the preaching of Savonarola as an example of spiritual steadfastness and renunciation of the vanities of worldly life, offered lively inspiration for numerous clay statuettes destined for private worship, with results similar to other widespread images of hermit life: a production in which, alongside a specialist called by the critics the Master of St. John (identified with Jacopo Sansovino or Benedetto da Rovezzano), various sculptors linked to the Dominican milieu of St. Mark's, such as Baccio da Montelupo and the Della Robbias, distinguished themselves, and among them above all Giovanni, Andrea's eldest son, the most i