The Voice in the Wilderness

John stands on a rise in a patch of light and preaches with his arm stretched out. Around him a great crowd sits, stands and listens, or does not listen: children play, dogs roam about, and three men in the foreground have turned their backs.

The picture is a grisaille, painted almost entirely in browns and greys, perhaps as the model for an etching that was never made. Rembrandt began it on a small piece of canvas and later enlarged it on all sides. It belonged to his friend and patron Jan Six.