The painting adorned the altar of San Giovanni in the now extinct church of Santa Maria Maggiore, in Venice, from where it was removed and transferred to the Accademia, in 1807.

The work is also cited in the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives (1568): "He made a painting of Saint John the Baptist in the desert among certain rocks for the church of Santa Maria Maggiore" (VI, 160)."

These stylistic features were appreciated by Vasari and Dolce, but not by some of the more modern critics: Roberto Longhi criticized a certain academicism (1946), Pallucchini spoke of "stagnation in the formulation of that muscular and evidently posed image"[2] The statuesque figure of John the Baptist stands out in the center of the altarpiece, while he raises his arm in his typical gesture of indicating Jesus; in this case it was the Sacrament in the central altar of the church.

Half-naked, dressed in his hermit's animal skin and holding the staff of reeds tied to form a cross, he is accompanied by the typical attribute of the lamb and immersed in a wooded landscape.

On the left, a cliff cuts vertically across the canvas and highlights, the figure of the Baptist, with its dark profile, giving depth to the entire composition.