St. John the Baptist, Redux

From the Lutheran Liturgical Prayer Brotherhood, here's an mp3 of an English version of Ut Queant Laxis ("Let the Example of Saint John Remind Us"), assigned there to Morning Prayer. I can't find this translation anywhere, but, once again, it's easy enough to listen and memorize it - as monastics through the centuries have always done. I like that method best, these days, personally.

He's using a different tune, though, than the typical one; it's the same tune, in fact, given for this feast day in Hymn melodies for the whole year. This tune is also used as the Lauds hymn tune for the Feast of the Visitation, as well as on other occasions. I've sung it before, myself, and it seems to be a festal hymn tune for Lauds in particular:





I should have linked the chant propers for in Nativitate S. Ioannis Baptistae, too, from the Braziliian Benedictines. So there they are.

And this gives me a chance to link the St. John the Baptist art page at Textweek. It's interesting to me that the Baptist is seen in so many and various ways by so many different people; there's much more variation in his portrayal than in that of any of the other saints, it seems to me. Here's a beauty from Caravaggio:





Here's Donatello's version, on the total other end of the scale:





And then there's Bosch:






Here's one I really like, from Andrea del Sarto, c. 1523: