Leonardo da Vinci painted his last (known) painting, St. John the Baptist, around 1513 to 1516. Just three years later, he died in Cloux, France, while this painting still under his possession.
How St. John the Baptist is unconventionally conveyed by Leonardo, with his ambiguous gesture towards heaven, is a mystery that perplexed many art critics and scholars for centuries. The fact that the painting is Leonardo's last only deepens this mystery.
Traditionally before Leonardo, St. John the Baptist was often portrayed as a tough, determined and bearded (therefore masculine, crude) man who was fit for wilderness and desert. However, Leonardo chose to paint him as a strikingly young, handsome, and delicately featured man who simply gestures towards heaven, almost in a manner of Greek (pagan) mythological figures. His elegant curly hair graces his head, and a deep, featureless shadow is all around him, enhancing the chiaroscuro effect that the master is so famous for.
Why did Leonardo choose to portray St. John in this way?
Many generally believe that the man in the portrait is modeled after Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, Leonardo's pupil. His nickname was Salai (Trans: The Little Unclean One).
I think that perhaps Leonardo, who by then was an old (and probably retrospective) man, wanted to portray a saint full of youth and mischievousness. Maybe Leonardo himself was longing for his younger years of his life.
The baptism also symbolizes the new life, the birth, in Christianity; does it not fitting, then, that St. John, the giver of life, would have to be young?
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