St. John the Baptist
Baron Maurice de Rothschild (1881-1957), Paris; Duveen Brothers, Paris; from whom purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1909 (as Antonio Rossellino).
A contemporary of Michelangelo and a collaborator of Leonardo da Vinci, the Florentine-born patrician Giovanni Francesco Rustici was an accomplished sculptor. This figure was inspired by contemporary depictions of St. John the Baptist, executed by the sculptors Donatello and Benedetta Damiano, with the saint shown as a young man beardless and wearing his customary hair shirt. For a brief period in the 1920s, decorative arts expert Wilhelm Valentiner argued that this marble was actually Michelangelo's lost sculpture of the young St. John the Baptist. His theory failed to convince others, and the sculpture was rightfully restored to Rustici in 1931.