The Castello Sforzesco, Milan has acquired Saint John the Baptist, Standing Full Length in a Landscape, c. 1508–1510 by Bernardo Zenale. The large panel is almost entirely filled by the monumental figure of Saint John the Baptist, depicted standing in a wild landscape with a winding river and distant mountain range. Only correctly ascribed to Zenale after appearing at auction in 2020, the work is a veritable masterpiece in the Lombard painter's oeuvre.
The first record of this painting dates to the beginning of the 1900s. It belonged to the politician Sir Henry Hoyle Howorth (1842–1923), a member of Parliament from 1886 to 1900 and a man of culture with wide interests in antiques and history. In 1905 he donated the painting, then attributed to Lazzaro Bastiani, to Downside Abbey, a Benedictine settlement located in Somerset. The abbey kept the panel until the sale at Sotheby’s in 2020.
Following this sale, the picture was the subject of an extensive study by Professor Stefania Buganza, who dated the work with astonishing precision to the years 1508-10, due to stylistic elements, including the Leonardesque character of the composition, the soft modelling of the saint's face, and the nuanced detail of the landscape.