Restored in 1989 with partial funding from World Monuments Fund and The J. Paul Getty Trust; additional maintenance in 1999 with Save Venice general funds.

Giovanni Battista Cima was born in Conegliano, a city in the Veneto near the foothills of the Dolomite Mountains. The artist came to be known as Cima da Conegliano and established himself in Venice in the early 1490s. His Baptism of Christ, painted from 1492 to 1494, is thought to be one of his first Venetian commissions. Displayed on the high altar, the Baptism is one of the oldest examples of a painting created for the altar that it still adorns, and which still has its original marble frame.

Christ stands at the center of the composition, his feet immersed in the clear, shallow waters of the Jordan River; on the right, John the Baptist lifts a bowl above Jesus’ head, from which he will pour the baptismal water. Three angels appear as attendant figures on the left side of the composition, bearing witness to the holy event and carrying Christ’s garments. In the heavens above, the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers directly above Christ, oriented frontally towards the viewer, and is surrounded by brightly colored angels emerging from the clouds.

Cima was one of the first artists to use large-scale landscape compositions in his works. Here he has depicted the subject of the panel, Jesus’ baptism, against a landscape with distant mountains and a castle atop a small hill, reminiscent of his hometown — a device that he would repeat in many of his other paintings.

The 1989 restoration of the painting was undertaken by conservator Antonio Bigolin, and the 1999 maintenance campaign by Paola Borghese, with the guidance of project director Sandro Sponza of the Superintendency of Fine Arts of Venice.

For select projects, conservation dossiers in Italian containing limited textual and photographic documentation may be available for consultation by appointment at the Venice office of Save Venice and the Rosand Library & Study Center. For inquiries, please contact us at venice@savevenice.org.

Giovanni Battista Cima, called Cima da Conegliano (c. 1459–c. 1517)
Baptism of Christ
1492-1494, tempera on wood panel
350 x 210 cm

San Giovanni Battista in Bragora: Homepage (in Italian)

San Giovanni Battista in Bragora: The Presbytery (in Italian)

Humfrey, Peter. Cima da Conegliano. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

—. “Cima Da Conegliano, Sebastiano Mariani, and Alvise Vivarini at the East End of S. Giovanni in Bragora in Venice.” The Art Bulletin 62, no. 3 (1980): 350-63.