Picture 2 / 4
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, 1566
We stand at the back of a crowd in a wood. Peasants, townspeople, soldiers and strangers in foreign dress listen to a man in brown far off among the trees. Most of what we see is backs.
The picture is dated 1566. In that summer thousands in the Netherlands went out of the towns to hear Protestant preachers in the open fields, and the picture has often been connected with those “hedge sermons”. John points with his left hand to a figure in pale blue at the edge of the crowd: Jesus.
The preacher is small and far away. His arm points sideways.
In the foreground a man in black has his palm read by a fortune-teller while the sermon goes on.
