The Meeting of the Young Christ and the Young St. John

Two young boys, representing Christ and John the Baptist, meet and shake hands in a craggy, mountainous terrain near a stone water fountain. To the left, Mary and Joseph observe the encounter while various animals, including deer and a bird of prey, occupy the naturalistic setting. St. John is identifiable by his camel-skin tunic and a slender reed cross, while the landscape recedes into distant blue mountains and a river valley.

This iconography was central to the devotional and philosophical life of 15th-century Florence, where St. John the Baptist served as both the city's patron and a Neoplatonic ideal of the contemplative hermit. The meeting in the 'desert' emphasizes the transition from the Old Law to the New Law and the spiritual affinity between the two figures celebrated by the Medici circle.