Which Renaissance painter created the Baptism of Christ, now in the National Gallery in London?

Piero della Francesca created The Baptism of Christ, now in London’s National Gallery.

The tempera-on-wood painting probably dates from the 1440s or early 1450s and was made for the monastery of San Giovanni Battista in Piero’s hometown of Borgo Sansepolcro. It shows Christ standing in the Jordan while John the Baptist performs the baptism, with the Holy Spirit represented by a dove above.

Piero organized the scene with remarkable geometric clarity. The central vertical alignment of Christ, the dove, and the tree contributes to the painting’s calm, balanced structure. The distant landscape also reflects the artist’s close attention to light, space, and mathematical proportion.

The work is sometimes attributed in casual discussions to Fra Angelico because of its religious subject and luminous style. Its creator, however, was Piero della Francesca, one of the most important mathematical and perspectival painters of the Italian Renaissance.