Landscape with the Baptism of Christ and the Preaching of the Baptist

When this small panel was listed in the Borghese inventory of 1693, the clerk had no doubt about the painter. He recorded Christ baptised in the Jordan with two angels, by Paolo Brilli, the Italian form of Paul Bril's name. In 1893 the critic Adolfo Venturi disagreed. He gave the picture to the Flemish master Jan Brueghel, nicknamed "Velvet" Brueghel, because of its little birds, flowers and butterflies, and Roberto Longhi agreed in 1928. Scholars returned it to Bril in 1959, and the museum now dates it to around 1597. The baptism happens low down, at the edge of a pool, with the two angels waiting on the bank and a thin shaft of light dropping from the sky. Deeper in the woods on the right, a small crowd has gathered to hear John preach.