Labels:text | woman | human face OCR: St. John the Baptist ca. 1509-10, oil on wood 27 1/4 x 22 1/2 in. (69.2 × 57.2 cm) Paris, Louvre Leonardo rendered St. John almost entirely by means of his innovative painting technique known as sfumato ("smoky"), by which subtle gradations of light and dark suggest the shape and contour of a figure. This is the most controversial of Leonardo's paintings, for both the saint's expression and his curious iconographic presentation: instead of the bony-framed prophet in a hair shirt (see Verrocchio's Baptism of Christ), Leonardo gives us a soft-bodied, smooth-faced youth whose identity is confirmed only by a thin reed cross. Kenneth Clark writes that "Leonardo, who could give life to every pose and glance, has subdued his gifts as if he were working in obsidian." Nonetheless, this was perhaps Leonardo's most frequently copied work.
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