St. John the Baptist Preaching

An Amsterdam painter and draftsman, Gerrit Pietersz., moved to Haarlem in about 1588-89, to train with Cornelis Cornelisz., a Mannerist artist whose work had a lasting influence on him. While in Haarlem, he made six prints that are arguably his most innovative and beautiful works. Although Pietrsz. was drawn to printmaking while in Haarlem, he, unlike his contemporaries, eschewed the sharp swelling and tapering lines characteristic of Mannerist engraving and turned to etching instead. In contrast to the hard brilliance of the engravings by Goltzius and his school, Pietersz.’s etchings are loose and exuberant. The lines seem almost to have a life of their own, as we can see in the looping curls of Joseph’s beard and hair in The Rest on the Flight into Egypt, or the bunched drapery of St. Cecilia’s sleeve in St. Cecilia Playing the Organ.




Printmaking was something of an experiment for Pietersz. He only executed six etchings during his entire career, five of which are dated 1593. All of his etchings are extremely rare, known only in a handful of impressions. The Met has four of his prints (one in a duplicate impression), more than any institution apart from the Albertina in Vienna and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.





Apart from his choice of etching as his medium, Gerrit PIetersz.’s representation of St. John the Baptist Preaching typifies the Mannerist aesthetic. As in the case of many late sixteenth and early seventeenth century works, the audience for the sermon is placed in the foreground while the saint occupies a lesser position in the middle distance. The viewer’s eye fixes first on the muscular back of the seated nude man and the partially clothed woman lounging next to him, while to the right an elegant soldier stands holding a lance on his shoulder as if it weighed nothing. St. John himself stands in the middle ground obscured by the deep shadow of the rock so it is difficult to make out his features. In the background is an earlier scene from this life of St. John, the Baptism of Christ. John stands on the riverbank anointing the kneeling Christ. Above Christ’s head is the tiny dove of the Holy Ghost and a beam of light that streams down on him from heaven. The museum also has a drawing by Pietersz. of this subject in the Robert Lehman Collection (inv. no. 175.1.86), which is slightly later in date.




Of all the artist’s prints, this etching went through the most state changes, but it is still very rare.