This hitherto unpublished picture is a variant of Mengs' smaller painting on copper in the collection of the Duke of Wellington (exhibited London, Kenwood, Anton Raphael Mengs 1728-1779 and his British Patrons, 1993, pp. 105-7, no. 28, illustrated in colour). There are notable differences in the position of the saint's right leg, in his hands and in the angle of his head; the animal skin he wears under the red cloak is not depicted in the other version and the inscription on the scroll is the other way up. In a report dated 10 October 1994 which is sold with the present painting, Dr. Steffi Roettgen confirms that 'the impostation and the major part of the execution of the Saint John is by Mengs himself' while the background, probably left unfinished, was overpainted by another hand. The Duke of Wellington's picture was finished before Mengs left Madrid in 1769 and is recorded in 1776 in the bedchamber of King Charles III in the Palacio Real in Madrid. Dr. Roettgen believes that the present painting represents an earlier stage in the development of the composition. She points out that it may be the small Saint John the Baptist mentioned by Gian Ludovico Bianconi in his Elogio storico del Cavaliere Anton Raffaele Mengs (1780) as in the Palacio Real, Madrid, or that recorded by Nicolas de la Cruz in his Viaje de España (XII, 1812, p. 115) in the Casita del Labrador at Aranjuez