The sermon of John the Baptist (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)

The sermon of John the Baptist
Pieter Bruegel the Elder , 1566
Oil on oak
95 × 160.5 cm
Szépmüvészeti Múzeum

The sermon of John the Baptist is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1566. The 95 cm × 160.5 cm oil painting on wood is named after a scene from the Gospels after Matthew and Luke and is located in the Szépművészeti Múzeum in Budapest .

The paintings

Motif and design

One person reads from another's hand

You can see a gathering in a forest clearing or at the end of a path. In the upper right half of the picture, the forest is already clearing and reveals a river, a castle and mountains. Painter and viewer are at the very back from a raised point of view and at first only recognize a diverse audience. The speaker is shown relatively small and wears an inconspicuous, brown penitential robe . In his audience there are obviously people who have traveled from afar, like an ottoman with a turban on the left edge of the picture . In the front center sit a Chinese and a Mongol - the latter is reading from the hand of a local gentleman . These three people don't seem interested in the lecture and are only related to each other. In the right foreground two men are discussing the lecture. Some have climbed trees - in the upper right corner and behind the speaker. Many people present are wearing elegant clothes. In the right half of the picture, two monks can be seen in the middle distance .

interpretation

The picture shows the sermon of John the Baptist , who just refers to his successor Jesus . He stands to the right of him and is shown even smaller than John, but emphasized by his light robe. Johannes' message applies to all classes, whether poor or rich, and is heard worldwide, as the exotic people make clear. The painter has transferred the biblical event, which is actually located in a desert, into a landscape that is familiar to him. He proceeded in a similar way in The Conversion of Paul or in The Bethlehemite Child Murder . Most of the listeners are attentive or at least interested, but not reverent, while a few, like the group of three in the foreground, do not care about the speaker at all. This is to be understood as a figurative expression of the individual search for faith.

Copy of Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1601/04)

Political interpretations are common in Bruegel's work. It is assumed that the picture could be inspired by the so-called " hedge sermons " of the time . These forbidden meetings of Anabaptists took place outside the cities, improvised in the open air. A quote from a contemporary reads: ... you saw the common people there, the people with a dissolute way of life ... but to tell the truth: you also saw people there who enjoyed a good reputation and led an impeccable life. You wouldn't have thought it possible that these people would go to the sermons. The painting dates from the same year in which Catholic churches were devastated in the so-called " iconoclasm ".

An argument against such an interpretation is that the painting was later in the possession of the daughter of Philip II of the Archduchess Isabella , governor general of the southern Netherlands from 1599. Many copies were also made during the Counter-Reformation .

Historical context

Philip II, the son of Emperor Charles V , had moved his seat from Brussels to Castile in the summer of 1559 after the war against France had been won, which in the Netherlands was perceived as a degradation. After all, he appointed his half-sister Margarethe von Parma , a native of Flemin, to be general governor of the seventeen provinces. The individual provinces, which had a relatively high degree of independence, received their own local aristocratic leaders as governors.

Soon, however, flared controversy over the reorganization of the dioceses and the coming still from the reign of Charles V heretic laws against Protestants . Favored by the aristocratic leaders for strategic reasons, radical Calvinism spread , whose followers demanded a state of God . At its peak, there was a six-day iconoclasm in August 1566, during which more than four hundred churches were devastated. In response, Philip II deposed his half-sister and appointed Álvarez de Toledo ( Duke Alba ) as the new governor. Initially, the latter was able to successfully suppress the uprising, but (among other things) the introduction of high taxes rekindled the uproar, which ultimately led to the division of the country into a Catholic south ( Belgium ) and a Protestant north (today's Netherlands).

Biblical story

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, John the Baptist preached in the wilderness and announced the divine judgment and the appearance of the Messiah: I will indeed baptize you with water to repent; but he who comes after me is stronger than me, whose sandals I am not worthy of wearing; he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire; ... ( Mt 3,11  ELB )

See also

• List of paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Web links

Commons : The Sermon of John the Baptist  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ( Mt 3,1  ELB )
2. ↑ ( Lk 3.1  ELB )
3. ^ Christian Vöhringer - Pieter Bruegel. 1525 / 30-1569. Tandem Verlag 2007 hfullmann (imprint) p. 83 ISBN 978-3-8331-3852-2
4. ↑ Marcus van Vaernewijck, quoted from M. Seidel / RH Marijektiven: Bruegel . Stuttgart 1984, German first edition 1969, p. 268.
5. ^ Christian Gräf: The winter pictures of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Ä. (Chapter: Excursus: Bruegel's relationship to humanism and its moral and religious attitude, p. 76). VDM Verlag, Saarbrücken 2009 ISBN 978-3-639-12775-1 .
6. ↑ Brockhaus multimedial premium 2007 article Netherlands in the struggle for freedom: For gold and freedom