DUTCH SCHOOL, CIRCA 1620

The painter of this intriguing canvas, who has thus far eluded identification, seems to have been well versed in the rich visual traditions of Dutch painting during the early seventeenth century. While many of the figure types in the composition ultimately derive from the graphic works of Lucas van Leyden and Albrecht Dürer, the strong colouration of the work and the modelling of the figures recall the work of Pieter Lastman, and the figure seated in the lower right of the canvas, turning his bare back to the viewer, is reminiscent of the work of the Utrecht master Hendrick ter Brugghen. The work also compares closely with a depiction of the same subject painted in Amsterdam in 1631 by Claes Moeyaert (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum). We should also note the close relationship of certain figures in the present painting to Abraham Bloemart's Saint John the Baptist preaching in the desert in the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. 172).

Such depictions of John the Baptist preaching came to possess semi-political overtones during the early seventeenth century after the suppression of Protestantism by the Catholic Regents of the Spanish Netherlands. This resulted in the practice of hagepreken (hedge-preaching), with large crowds gathering in the fields outside Antwerp, Breda and ’s-Hertogenbosch, rapidly spreading to the northern Netherlands as well. Consequently, depictions of Saint John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness assumed a personal significance for Protestant patrons, as an expression of their own ideals of religious freedom and equality (W.A. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven and London, 2007, I, pp. 97-98).