Saint John the Baptist Preaching

The leading painter in his native Utrecht in the late 16th and early 17th century, Bloemaert was a refined late Mannerist of Italianate cast, then affected by that city’s flourishing school of Caravaggesque naturalism. He was an exceptionally accomplished and prolific draftsman in the preparation of designs for paintings and engravings as well as in the intimate recording of natural motifs. This is a characteristic landscape study, conventional in arrangement and stylized in handling, but with a diffuse atmosphere and select passages that portend the great age of Dutch landscape and genre.