Saint John the Baptist in prayer

A very rare finely carved ivory plaque depicting Saint John the Baptist in prayer, very close to the manner of Albrecht Dürer. Probably part of a larger composition decorating a wooden casket. Albrecht Dürer (Nuremberg, 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528) was a German painter, engraver, sculptor, mathematician and theorist. Among the greatest artists of the 16th century, he is considered the foremost exponent of German Renaissance painting. Dürer knew and admired Italian art. In his works he combined Renaissance perspective and proportion with the typically Northern taste for realism of detail. The faces, bodies and garments of his figures are rendered with minute precision, the settings are described realistically, and the spaces are clear and ordered thanks to a precise perspectival grid.