Saint John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness with the Baptism of Christ in the background

Painted on a panel made from a single board, this sweeping landscape represents a favored subject of Herri met de Bles: the Preaching of Saint John the Baptist. The artist employs his typical left-right diagonal compositional arrangement, but enhances it using a succession of planes of browns and greens leading to blues in the distant background, a strategy deemed by Luc Serck to be `particulièrement originale’ (loc. cit.). John the Baptist appears at center before a stand of large trees, anchoring the painting as he preaches to the masses gathered before him. A ruined castle is set before a mountain in the distance at left, while minutely-rendered vignettes of the Baptism of Christ and Christ Preaching in the Wilderness are seen at right. The figures are highly reminiscent of those found in other paintings of the Baptist preaching by Met de Bles, including, as Serck has observed, the figure whose head a shoulders are visible behind an obscuring boulder at right, who finds a parallel in the painting in the Landscape with the Preaching of Saint John the Baptist of circa 1540 in the Cleveland Museum of Art (ibid.).

Two ibexes climb the rocky outcropping at left, traditional symbols of man’s precarious state – one misstep has grave consequences. Below them sits an owl. From the sixteenth century onward, this bird has always been taken as the 'hallmark' or signature of works by Herri met de Bles. Gian Paolo Lomazzo (Trattato dell'arte de la Pittura..., Milan, 1584, pp. 475 and 689) refers to the painter as 'Henerico Blessio Boemo, Chiamato de la Civetta [little owl] principal pittore de paesi', while Karel van Mander (Het Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604, fol. 219v) calls him 'Den Meester van den uil' (the master of the owl), adding 'His works can often be found with the Emperor, in Italy and in other places; in Italy they are particularly sought after, for the man with the little owl is very widely famed'.