John the Baptist

In 1641 the Thirty Years' War had been running for more than 20 years, and the emperor, Ferdinand III, was still fighting Swedish and French armies in Germany. That year Guercino, working in his home town of Cento, finished what his early biographer Carlo Cesare Malvasia listed as a large picture for His Imperial Majesty, a Saint John in the desert, sent to Vienna. It is still there.

John is young here, the voice crying in the wilderness, one arm raised and a finger pointing up as he calls on his listeners to repent. Guercino sets him almost square to us under an open sky, clearly outlined and wrapped in a broad red cloak. A preparatory drawing shows one late change. In the sketch John's thin reed cross stood behind his knee, and in the painting it runs in front of it, so its whole length can be seen.