John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan. He holds a slender cross and a scroll reading “ECCE AGNUS DEI” (“Behold the Lamb of God”), while two angels kneel at the left, one holding Jesus’s clothes. The panel was made in Andrea del Verrocchio’s workshop in Florence around 1470–1475 for the church of the Vallombrosan monastery of San Salvi. According to Vasari, the young Leonardo da Vinci, Verrocchio’s pupil, painted the angel on the left with such skill that he upset his master.

Current studies credit Leonardo with more, including the river landscape, the golden light and the figure of Christ; another, older painter probably also worked on it. Painted in tempera and oil on panel, 177 × 151 cm, it has been in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence since 1919.