Saint John the Baptist is shown as a boy of about fourteen, full-length, walking and gesturing to the right. He wears a wine-red robe over a pale green undergarment and carries a reed cross in his left hand. There is an architectural background, with a distant landscape seen through a circular window.

This is a copy of the left-hand part of a triptych painted by Correggio c. 1530 for the high altar of S. Maria della Misericordia, Correggio, the other panels of which were a ‘Christ in Majesty’ (a copy of which is found in the Vatican Museum) and a ‘Saint Bartholomew’. There is now no record of the appearance of the original triptych, and although it has been suggested that this might have been one of the original parts, its style is not compatible with Correggio’s and it is thought to be by a Bolognese artist, working c. 1600.