Pietro Perugino, Baptism of Christ (fresco)

Description

The scene of the Baptism of Christ is the first on the wall to the right of the altar, looking towards it, and is in parallel with the Departure of Moses for Egypt and the circumcision of his son Eliezer on the opposite side. There was in fact a precise parallelism between the Ceremonies of circumcision and baptism respectively in the world Jewish and Christian, also implying the deepest and most of the second. In this sense, baptism, as also written by St. Augustine and many of the Fathers of the Church, was a sort of "spiritual circumcision" for children. The scene is set according to a symmetrical scheme, typical of Perugino. In the center the Jordan River it flows straight towards the viewer, up to the feet of Jesus and John Battista who is baptizing him, in the foreground. From the sky descends the dove of the Holy Spirit, sent by God the Father on high, represented within a nimbus of light with seraphim and cherubs and flanked by two Angels in flight.