An extensive river landscape with the Baptism of the Eunuch

Taken from the Acts of the Apostles (8:26-40), the Baptism of the Eunuch was a relatively unusual subject in art in the 17th Century, although it was more commonly used in preaching and theology, where it was adopted by Reformist and Remonstrant preachers as a model of adult baptism. The deacon Philip has converted the treasurer of Queen Candace of Ethiopia and baptised him in the river. In this drawing the treasurer is still in the water, with his clothes piled on the bank and his companions looking on, while Hondius has followed the Biblical text exactly in showing that ‘the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away’: the deacon is already making his way off over a bridge on the extreme right. Drawings by Hondius are rare, but there is a Return of the Prodigal Son in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (Schapelhouman, op. cit., no. 33), which is closely comparable in the handling of the landscape, and an Adoration of the Shepherds was formerly in a private collection in Amsterdam (image in the Rijksprentenkabinet). A drawing closely comparable in composition, with figures of similar scale in an extensive wooded landscape, is Hondius's Saint John the Baptist identifying Christ as the Lamb of God, sold at Christie's, Amsterdam, 11 November 1996, lot 54, which served as the preparatory design for the print of the same subject (N. Orenstein, New Hollstein, 'Hendrick Hondius', no. 8).