The "Silver Altar", actually an antependium, is one of the most important masterpieces of Tuscan goldsmithing. It comes from the treasury of the Baptistery, it is in silver on a wooden core and translucent enamels, and was made between 1366 and 1483 by some of the greatest Tuscan goldsmiths and artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including Leonardo di Ser Giovanni, Michelozzo, Bernardo Cennini, Antonio del Pollaiolo and Verrocchio. It is a mobile structure that was used to be placed in the Baptistery (at the altar in the fourteenth century and on the baptismal font from the fifteenth century onwards), on the occasion of the feasts of Saint John the Baptist (June 24) and of the Baptism of Christ (January 13). The most precious sacred objects of the Baptistery treasury were displayed on the “Altar”, such as chalices, reliquaries, candlesticks and liturgical vestments and, from the 15th century, the large cross created by Pollaiolo was mounted above. The altar was commissioned and funded by the Cloth Merchants’ Guild and an inscription on its base gives the date work begun: 1366. The antependium is composed of six pillars, with small figures of prophets and sibyls, and by twelve reliefs, depicting as many episodes from the life of Saint John the Baptist, from his birth, to his preaching, to his encounter with Christ, up to his incarceration and death. In the large central niche there is a precious statue by Michelozzo depicting the saint according to the traditional iconography of a penitent ascetic in the desert: emaciated, with unkempt beard and hair and wearing a camel hair garment held by a leather belt. St. John holds the cross in his left hand, to recall the role of forerunner of the Savior, while with his right hand he points to Christ, whose figure once stood out above, in the mosaics of the vault of the Baptistery.