Caravaggio’s John the Baptist with a Ram: Iconography and Source

Abstract

Shannon Pritchard has pointed to a possible source for Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes in the pages of this journal. I hope to do something similar: to identify a possible print source for the Caravaggio painting traditionally referred to as John the Baptist with a Ram. TheMusei Capitolini and the Doria Pamphilj Gallery, Rome, hold two extant versions of the painting (dated to 1602). But nothing here bears on forensic issues of a curatorial nature.