The Baptism of Christ

These four panels, together with another one depicting the Resurrection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), once constituted a predella—a series of small pictures, often narrative scenes, forming the base of an altarpiece. These predella scenes depict moments when Jesus’s divine nature was revealed: at his birth, at his baptism, during his conversation at a well with a Samarian woman, at his res-urrection, and through his appearance to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection. The painting that once surmounted the predella as the focal point of the altarpiece has not been identified.