The Baptism of Christ window was designed the in the late 1890s by Frank Brangwyn, a largely self-taught but well-traveled Anglo-Welsh artist. In 1895, Brangwyn had been commissioned to decorate the exterior of a Parisian art gallery owned by art dealer Siegfried Bing, who became Louis Comfort Tiffany’s exclusive distributor in Europe after 1894, and brought Brangwyn into Tiffany’s cadre of designers. By that time, Tiffany had already produced windows by avant-garde French artists including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, and Felix Vallotton. The BMA window incorporates some of the extraordinary varieties of glass for which Tiffany’s glass-making factory at Corona, New York was renowned. Multiple layers of glass secured by intricate systems of leading create a wide range of subtle colors and textures. Although The Baptism of Christ won a medal at the Paris Salon in 1898, and was shown the following year in an exhibition orchestrated by Bing at London’s Grafton Galleries, it never sold. After Tiffany’s death, Joseph Briggs, whose gilt mantelpiece is on view in this gallery, oversaw liquidation of the firm’s remaining assets. Herman and Ben Cohen, the liquidators, retained the window; the family later donated it to the BMA.