Ecce Agnus Dei

Giovanni di Paolo · 1455–60

Medium

Tempera on panel

Original size

68.5 × 39.5 cm (27 × 15 1/2 in.); Framed: 80.1 × 53.4 × 8.9 cm (31 1/2 × 21 × 3 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Italian Renaissance

Ecce Agnus Dei carries the hushed intensity of private devotion — a small panel painting in which Giovanni di Paolo distills an entire theology into a single outstretched gesture. Di Paolo worked in Siena during the mid-fifteenth century, long after Florentine painters had embraced Renaissance naturalism, and he largely refused to follow them. His figures are willowy and otherworldly, his gold grounds luminous rather than spatial, his colour combinations — acid greens, deep reds, silver-white robes — more visionary than descriptive. In this panel, John the Baptist turns to indicate the approaching Christ with a solemnity that feels less theatrical than inevitable, as though the moment exists outside of time. The art historian John Pope-Hennessy memorably described di Paolo as "the El Greco of the Quattrocento," a comparison that points to the same spiritual electricity running through both painters despite the centuries between them. This hand-painted oil reproduction is worked on canvas by a classically trained artist, translating di Paolo's tempera and gold leaf into a medium that preserves the original's depth of tone and delicate linearity. The result is a piece that lives comfortably in a domestic space while holding onto something genuinely devotional at its core.