The icon depicts winged and haloed St. John the Baptist in the desert. The saint is represented full-length in an erect frontal pose with wings outspread, clothed in a camel hair tunic and dark green himation. In his left hand, St. John holds an unfurled scroll with an inscription written in Old Church Slavonic and a chalice with his decapitated head, the right hand is raised in a gesture of blessing. The text on the scroll reads: ‘Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand‘ (Matthew 3:1-11).

St. John the Baptist is one of the most venerated Christian saints, the last Prophet of the Old Testament, the Forerunner of Christ. St. John’s life was a common subject in Western and in Eastern art. The iconographic type depicting St. John as an angel originated in thirteenth-century Byzantium. One of the earliest examples can be seen in the frescoes from Arilje dating to 1296. The frontal type was common to the sixteenth-century icons of Greece and Crete. This type was spread throughout the Eastern Church in the post-Byzantine period but was considered heretical by Western ecclesiastics.