Florence Baptistery
Zacharias appears in the main panel sitting in the foreground with a pen and scroll. To his right, Mary presents his son to him. By including the Virgin, Rogier strays from the Gospel account of the scene, referring instead to the apocryphal version popularised by the "Golden Legend" and the "Meditations on the Life of Christ", both of which have Mary presenting the child John. Erwin Panofsky suggests that Rogier might have been influenced by Andrea Pisano's relief "The Naming of the Baptist" at the Florence Baptistery, which shows a similar scene of Mary presenting to Zechariah, who sits holding a pen and scroll.