The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist

The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist, painted in 1566, shows the prophet preaching to a vast crowd in a forest clearing. Bruegel uses the biblical subject as a pretext for depicting a large gathering of Flemish citizens, and the painting has been interpreted as reflecting the open-air Calvinist sermons (hagenpreken) that were taking place in the Netherlands during this turbulent period of religious conflict. The crowd's varied reactions mirror the divided religious loyalties of Bruegel's contemporaries.

Bruegel masterfully depicts a crowd of hundreds of figures with individualized faces, expressions, and costumes, each contributing to the sense of a living community. The forest setting creates a natural amphitheater, with the tiny figure of John the Baptist barely visible among the trees.