|
St John the Baptist and St Catherine of Alexandria stand at the edge of the step and, like their companion saints in the altarpiece, have a table running behind them. St John's cross is tucked nonchalantly behind his halo and the base of it sticks right forward, but neither this nor his foreshortened hand recreate the impression of three-dimensionality with which he was rendered in the Linaiuoli altarpiece. He holds a scroll with a quotation from his own words, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world', (John 1, v. 29). St Catherine has fewer sculptural qualities still. Beside her is a broken wheel from the diabolical machine on which she was tested. Some critics see the hand of assistants, rather than primarily that of the master, in these two figures.
|
