Johannes d. Täufer

Johannes d. Täufer (John the Baptist) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, attributed to Aelbrecht Bouts and painted around 1490, shows the saint who announced Christ's coming — identifiable by his attribute of the lamb and his characteristic rough garment of camel's hair. The Kunsthistorisches Museum holds one of the world's great collections of early Flemish painting, and this Bouts panel sits within a tradition of saint's images produced for altarpieces and devotional panels throughout the Low Countries. John the Baptist, as the bridge between the Old and New Testaments, was among the most frequently represented saints in Flemish religious art.

The rendering of John's rough camel-hair garment presented Bouts with an opportunity to demonstrate the Flemish technical capacity for representing different material textures. The contrast between the coarse, dark garment and the delicate lamb resting beside him is a standard compositional element handled here with careful differentiation of surface qualities.