Saint John the Baptist Embracing the Lamb, French School, 17th Century Oil on Canvas, Oval Carved Gilt Frame

The lamb is painted with more care than the child. Its fleece is built in short white strokes over grey, its eye is drawn, and it looks out of the picture while the boy looks past you.

Oil on canvas, relined, 16 x 13 inches (41 x 33 cm), 21 x 18 inches (53 x 46 cm) framed. Unsigned. French School, circa 1670 to 1690, in a carved oval giltwood frame.

A young child kneels with one arm around a lamb, a red drape falling from the shoulder across the hip, a reed cross with its white banderole held upright in the right hand. Behind him the ground is black, and at the right the picture opens onto a blue distance with a mountain and a low horizon. The attributes are those of Saint John the Baptist, the lamb, the reed cross and the banderole. The flesh is pearly and thinly built, the drape laid in broad planes of a single red, and the black ground is opened at one side only, which is the standard construction of a devotional oval of these decades.

The canvas has been relined and sits on a new oval stretcher. The paint layer is stable with small losses at the top centre, and the frame carries losses to the gesso along the inner edge and to the ornament.