Virgin and Child with Saints Elizabeth and John the Baptist

Jesus and John the Baptist were both products of miraculous births. Mary was a virgin, and John’s mother Elizabeth was past childbearing age. When the two pregnant women met, John leapt for joy in Elizabeth’s womb—the first mortal recognition of Jesus as the Savior. John’s realization was confirmed when, as he baptized Jesus, the heavens opened and God spoke of Jesus as His beloved son. Here Mary and Jesus offer John something to drink. This may be an allusion to Jesus’s later statement that “the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” By the time Annibale made this print, he had lived in Rome for nearly a decade. The classical refinement of the composition shows that he had fully imbibed the lessons of the Renaissance artist Raphael, who had painted frescoes for the Farnese family nearly two centuries earlier.